IC-NRLF 


GIFT   OF 
MICHAEL  REESE 


A    LITTLE 
ENGLISH    GALLERY 


BY 


LOUISE  IMOGEN  GUINEY 


NEW    YORK 

HARPER    AND    BROTHERS 

MDCCCXCIV 


Copyright,  1894,  by  HAKHEK  &  BROTHERS. 
All  rights  reserved. 


TO 
EDMUND   GOSSE 

THIS    FRIENDLY    TRESPASS    ON    HIS    FIELDS 


284492 


PREFATORY    NOTE 

THE  studies  in  this  book  are  chosen  from  a 
inumber  \\ritten  at  irregular  intervals,  and  from 
sheer  interest  in  their  subjects,  long  ago.     Por 
tions  of  them,  or  rough  drafts  of  what  has  since 
been  wholly  remodelled  from  fresher  and  fuller 
material  at  first  hand,  have  appeared  within  five 
, years  in    The  Atlantic  Monthly,  Macmillaris, 
The  Catholic  World,  and  Poet- Lore;  and  thanks 
are  due  the  magazines  for  permission  to  reprint 
them.     Yet  more  cordial  thanks,  for  kind  as 
sistance  on  biographical  points,  belong  to  the 
I  Earl  of  Powis;   the  Rev.  R.  H.  Davies,  Vicar 
of  old  St.  Luke's,  Chelsea  ;  the  Rev.  T.  Vere 
Bay  e,  of  Christchurch,  and  H.  E.  D.  Blakis- 
ton,  Esq.,  of  Trinity  College,  Oxford  ;   T.  W. 
Lyster,   Esq. ,  of  the  National  Library  of  Ire 
land  ;    Aubrey  de  Vere   Beauclerk,  Esq. ;  Miss 
Langton,  of  Langton-by-Spilsby;  the  Vicars  of 
Dauntsey,  Enfield  Highway,  and  Montgomery, 
;and  especially  those  of  High  Ercall  and  Speke  ; 
and  the  many  others  in  England  through  whose 
courtesy  and  patience  the  tracer  of   these  un 
important  sketches  has  been  able  to  make  them 
approximately  life-like. 

*»  \ 


CONTENTS 


CHAP. 

I.    LAKY    DANVERS    (1561-1627) 
'I.    HEN 

III.  GE01 

IV.  TOPI 


BEN! 

v.   VVIL: 


Y  VAUGHA.N  (1621-1695)  .  , 
GE  FARQUHAR  (1677-1707)  . 
AM  BEAUCLEKK  (1739-1780) 

AND 

ET  LANGTON  (1741-1800)  . 
,IAM  HAZLITT  (1778-1830) 


PAGE 

I 

53 
119 


171 
229 


LADY    DANVERS 

1561-1627 


LADY  DANVERS 

R.  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

somewhere  devotes  a  grate 
ful  sentence  to  the  women 
who  have  left  a  fragrance  in 
literary  history,  and  whose 
loss  of  long  ago  can  yet  inspire  men  of 
to-day  with  indescribable  regret.  Lady 
Danvers  is  surely  one  of  these.  As  John 
Donne's  dear  friend,  and  George  Her 
bert's  mother,  she  has  a  double  poetic 
claim,  like  her  unforgotten  contempo 
rary,  Mary  Sidney,  for  whom  was  made 
an  everlasting  epitaph.  If  Dr.  Donne's 
fraternal  fame  have  not  quite  the  old  lus 
tre  of  the  incomparable  Sir  Philip's,  it 
is,  at  least,  a  greater  honor  to  own  Her 
bert  for  son  than  to  have  perpetuated 
the  race  of  Pembroke.  Nor  is  it  an  in 
harmonious  thing  to  remember,  in  thus 
calling  up,  in  order  to  rival  it,  the  sweet 


memory  of  "  Sidney's  sister,"  that  Her 
bert  and  Pembroke  have  long  been,  and 
are  yet,  married  names. 

Magdalen,  the  youngest  child  of  Sir 
Richard  Newport,  and  of  Margaret 
Bromley,  his  wife,  herself  daughter  of 
that  Bromley  who  was  Privy-Councillor, 
Lord  Chief-Justice,  and  executor  to  Hen 
ry  VIII.,  was  born  in  High  Ercall,  Salop; 
the  loss  or  destruction  of  parish  registers 
leaves  us  but  1561-62  as  the  probable 
date.  Of  princely  stock,  with  three  sis 
ters  and  an  only  brother,  and  heir  to  virt 
ue  and  affluence,  she  could  look  with  the 
right  pride  of  unfallen  blood  upon  "the 
many  fair  coats  the  Newports  bear  "  over 
their  graves  at  Wroxeter.  It  was  the  day 
of  learned  and  thoughtful  girls ;  and  this 
girl  seems  to  have  been  at  home  with 
book  and  pen,  with  lute  and  viol.  She 
married,  in  the  flower  of  her  youth,  Rich 
ard  Herbert,  Esquire,  of  Blache  Hall, 
Montgomery,  black -haired  and  black- 
bearded,  as  were  all  his  line ;  a  man  of 
some  intellectual  training,  and  of  noted 
courage,  descended  from  a  distinguished 
brother  of  the  yet  more  distinguished  Sir 


Richard  Herbert  of  Edward  IV.'s  time, 
and  from  the  most  ancient  rank  of  Wales 
and  England.  At  Eyton  in  Salop,  in 
1581,  was  born  their  eldest  child,  Ed 
ward,  afterwards  Lord  Herbert  of  Cher- 
bury,  a  writer  who  is  still  the  puzzle  and 
delight  of  Continental  critics.  He  is  said 
to  have  been  a  beautiful  boy,  and  not 
very  robust ;  his  first  speculation  with 
his  infant  tongue  was  the  piercing  query  : 
"  How  came  I  into  this  world  ?"  But  his 
next  brother,  Richard,  was  of  another 
stamp ;  and  went  his  frank,  flashing,  fight 
ing  way  through  Europe,  "with  scars  of 
four-and-twenty  wounds  upon  him,  to  his 
grave  "  at  Bergen-op-Zoom,  with  William, 
the  third  son,  following  in  his  soldierly 
footsteps.  Charles  grew  up  reserved  and 
studious,  and  died,  like  his  paternal  uncle, 
a  dutiful  Fellow  of  New  College,  Oxford. 
The  fifth  of  these  Herberts,  "a  soul  com 
posed  of  harmonies,"  as  Cotton  said  of 
him,  and  destined  to  make  the  name  be 
loved  among  all  readers  of  English,  was 
George,  the  poet,  the  saintly  "  parson  of 
Fuggleston  and  Bemerton."  Henry,  his 
junior,  with  whom  George  had  a  sympathy 


peculiarly  warm  and  long,  became  in  his 
manhood  Master  of  the  Revels,  and  held 
the  office  for  over  fifty  years.  "  You  and  I 
are  alone  left  to  brother  it,"  Lord  Herbert 
of  Cherbury  once  wrote  him,  in  a  mood 
more  tender  than  his  wont,  when  all  else 
of  that  radiant  family  had  gone  into  dust. 
The  youngest  of  Magdalen  Newport's  sons 
was  Thomas,  "a  posthumous,"  traveller, 
sailor,  and  master  of  a  ship  in  the  war 
against  Algiers.  Elizabeth,  Margaret,  and 
Frances  were  the  daughters,  of  whom 
Izaak  Walton  says,  with  satisfaction,  that 
they  lived  to  be  examples  of  virtue,  and 
to  do  good  to  their  generation.  None  of 
them  made  an  illustrious  match.  Mar 
garet  married  a  Vaughan.  Frances  se 
cured  unto  herself  the  patronymic  Brown, 
and  was  happily  seconded  by  Elizabeth, 
George  Herbert's  "dear  sick  sister," who 
became  Mistress  Jones.  In  the  south 
chancel  transept  of  Montgomery  Church, 
where  Richard  Herbert  the  elder  had 
been  buried  three  years  before,  there  was 
erected  in  1600,  at  his  wife's  cost,  a  large 
canopied  alabaster  altar -tomb,  with  two 
portrait  -  figures  recumbent.  All  around 


it,  in  the  quaint  and  affectionate  boast  of 
the  age,  are  the  small  images  of  these 
seven  sons  and  three  daughters;  "Job's 
number  and  Job's  distribution,"  as  she 
once  remarked,  and  as  her  biographers 
failed  not  to  repeat  after  her.  But  their 
kindred  ashes  are  widely  sundered,  and 
"  as  content  with  six  foot  as  with  the 
moles  of  Adrianus."  This  at  Montgom 
ery  is  the  only  known  representation  of 
the  Lady  Magdalen.  Her  effigy  lies  at 
her  husband's  left,  the  palms  folded,  the 
eyes  open,  the  full  hair  rolled  back  from 
a  low  brow, beneath  a  charming  and  sim 
ple  head-dress.  Nothing  can  be  nobler 
than  the  whole  look  of  the  face,  like  her 
in  her  prime,  and  reminding  one  of  her 
son's  loving  epithet,  "my  Juno."  The 
short-sighted  inscription  upon  the  slab 
yet  includes  her  name. 

Never  had  an  army  of  brilliant  and  re 
quiring  children  a  more  excellent  mother. 
"  Sever  a  par  ens,"  her  gentle  George  called 
her  in  his  scholarly  verses;  and  such  she 
was,  with  the  mingled  sagacity  and  joy- 
ousness  which  made  up  her  character. 
If  we  are  to  believe  their  own  testimony, 


the  leading  members  of  her  young  family 
were  of  excessively  peppery  Cymric  tem 
peraments,  and  worthy  to  call  out  that 
"manlier  part  "  of  her  which  Dr.  Donne, 
who  had  every  opportunity  of  observing 
it  in  play,  was  so  quick  to  praise.  There 
is  a  passage  in  a  letter  of  Sir  Thom 
as  Lacy,  addressed  to  Edward  Herbert, 
touching  upon  "the  knowledge  I  had 
how  ill  you  can  digest  the  least  indignity." 
"  Holy  George  Herbert  "  himself,  in  1618, 
commended  to  his  dear  brother  Henry 
the  gospel  of  self -honoring  :  "It  is  the 
part  of  a  poor  spirit  to  undervalue  him 
self  and  blush."  And  physical  courage 
went  hand  in  hand  with  this  blameless 
haughtiness  of  the  Herberts,  a  pretty  col 
lateral  proof  of  which  may  be  adduced 
from  a  message  of  Sir  Henry  Jones  to  his 
brother-in-law,  the  other  Henry  just 
mentioned,  concerning  a  gift  for  his  little 
nephew.  "  If  my  cozen,  William  Herbert 
your  sonne  ...  be  ready  for  the  rideing  of 
a  horse,  I  will  provide  him  with  a  Welch 
nagg  that  shall  be  as  mettlesome  as  him 
self."  There  is  no  doubt  that  all  this 
racial  fire  was  fostered  by  one  woman. 


"  Thou  my  root,  and  my  most  firm  rock, 
O  my  mother !"  George  cried,  long  after 
in  the  Parentalia,  aware  that  he  owed  to 
her  his  high  ideals,  and  the  strength  of 
character  which  is  born  of  self-discipline, 
"  God  gave  her,"  says  one  of  her  two 
devoted  annalists,  who  we  wish  were 
not  so  brief  and  meagre  of  detail — "  God 
gave  her  such  a  comeliness  as  though  she 
was  not  proud  of  it,  yet  she  was  so  con 
tent  with  it  as  not  to  go  about  to  mend 
it  by  any  art."  Her  fortune  was  large, 
her  benevolence  wide-spreading.  All  the 
countryside  knew  her  for  the  living  rep 
resentative  of  the  ever-hospitable  houses 
of  Newport  and  Bromley.  "  She  gave  not 
on  some  great  days,"  continues  Dr.  Donne, 
"or  at  solemn  goings  abroad;  but  as 
God's  true  almoners,  the  sun  and  moon, 
that  pass  on  in  a  continual  doing  of  good  ; 
as  she  received  her  daily  bread  from  God, 
so  daily  she  distributed  it,  and  imparted 
it  to  others."  In  these  years  of  her  wife- 
hood  and  widowhood  at  Montgomery 
Castle  (the  "  romancy  place  "  dating  from 
the  eleventh  century,  and  ruined,  like  the 
fine  old  house  at  High  Ercall,  during  the 


Civil  Wars),  and  afterwards  at  Oxford  and 
London,  she  reared  her  happy  crew  of 
boys  and  girls  in  an  air  of  generosity 
and  honor;  training  them  to  habits  of 
hardiness  and  simplicity,  and  to  the  equal 
relish  of  work  and  play.  "  Herself  with 
her  whole  family  (as  a  church  in  that 
elect  lady's  house,  to  whom  John  wrote 
his  second  Epistle)  did  every  Sabbath 
shut  up  the  day  at  night  with  a  gener 
al,  with  a  cheerful  singing  of  psalms." 
One  may  guess  at  young  Richard's  tur 
moil  in-doors,  and  at  the  little  Elizabeth's 
soft,  patient  ways,  and  think  of  George 
(on  Sundays  at  any  rate)  as  the  child  of 
content,  "  the  contesseration  of  elegan 
ces  "  worthy  Archdeacon  Oley  called 
him. 

The  fair  and  stately  matron  moving 
over  them  and  among  them  was  not 
without  her  prejudices.  "  I  was  once," 
Edward  testifies,  "  in  danger  of  drown 
ing,  learning  to  swim.  My  mother,  upon 
her  blessing,  charged  me  never  to  learn 
swimming;  telling  me,  further,  that  she 
had  learned  of  more  drowned  than  saved 
by  it."  Though  the  given  reason  failed 


to  impress  him,  he  adds,  the  command 
ment  did  ;  so  that  the  accomplished 
Crichton  of  Cherbury,  who  understood 
alchemy,  broke  his  way  through  meta 
physics,  and  rode  the  Great  Horse  ;  the 
ambassador,  author,  and  beau,  to  whom 
Ben  Jonson  sent  his  greeting : 

"  What  man  art  thou  that  art  so  many  men, 
All-virtuous  Herbert?" 

even  he  lacked,  on  principle,  the  science 
of  keeping  himself  alive  in  an  alien  ele 
ment,  because  it  had  been  pronounced 
less  risky  to  die  outright !  It  was  a  pret 
ty  paradox,  and  one  which  sets  down  our 
high-minded  Magdalen  as  quite  feminine, 
quite  human. 

Her  Edward  was  matriculated  in  1595 
at  University  College,  Oxfocd,*  for  which 
he  seemed  to  retain  no  great  partiality ; 
he  bequeathed  his  books,  like  a  loyal 
Welshman,  to  Jesus  College,  instead,  and 

*  Walton  confuses  this  Edward  Herbert  with  a  name 
sake  entered  at  Queen's  College ;  and  he  follows  the 
erring  dates  of  the  Autobiography  of  Lord  Herbert  of 
Cherbury.  The  boy's  age  is  correctly  given  as  fourteen 
in  the  college  registers. 


his  manuscripts  to  the  Bodleian  Library. 
In  1598,  when  he  was  little  more  than 
seventeen,  he  was  wedded  to  his  cousin 
Mary  Herbert,  of  St.  Gillian  in  Mon- 
mduthshire.  Her  age  was  one-and-twen- 
ty ;  she  was  an  heiress,  enjoined  by  her 
father's  will  to  marry  a  Herbert  or  for 
feit  her  estates;  she  was  also  almost  a 
philosopher.  There  was  no  wild  affec 
tion  on  either  side,  but  the  marriage 
promised  rather  well,  both  persons  hav 
ing  resources ;  and  no  real  catastrophe 
befell  either  in  after-life.  Much  as  she 
desired  the  match  for  worldly  motives, 
the  chief  promoter  of  it  was  too  solici 
tous  for  her  tall  dreamer  of  a  son,  who 
underwent  the  pleasing  peril  of  having 
Queen  Bess  clap  him  on  the  cheek,  not 
to  take  the,  whole  weight  of  conjugal 
direction  on  her  own  shoulders.  With 
out  undue  officiousness,  but  with  the  mas 
terly  foresight  of  a  shrewd  saint,  she 
moved  to  Oxford  from  Montgomery  with 
her  younger  children  and  their  tutors,  in 
order  to  handle  Mistress  Herbert's  hus 
band  during  his  minority.  "  She  con 
tinued  there  with  him,"  says  Walton,  in 


his  Life  of  George  Herbert,  "  and  still 
kept  him  in  a  moderate  awe  of  herself, 
and  so  much  under  her  own  eye  as  to 
see  and  converse  with  him  daily;  but  she 
managed  this  power  over  him  without 
any  such  rigid  sourness  as  might  make 
her  company  a  torment  to  her  child,  but 
with  such  a  sweetness  and  compliance 
with  the  recreations  and  pleasures  of 
youth  as  did  incline  him  willingly  to 
spend  much  of  his  time  in  the  company 
of  his  dear  and  careful  mother." 

It  was  during  this  stay  that  she  con 
tracted  the  chivalrous  friendship  which 
has  embalmed  her  tranquil  memory.  Dr. 
John  Donne  (not  ordained  until  1614,  and 
indeed  not  Dr.  Donne  then  at  all,  but 
"  Jack  Donne,"  his  profaner  self)  had  been 
at  Cadiz  with  Essex,  and  had  wandered 
over  the  face  of  Europe ;  and  he  came 
back,  accidentally,  to  Oxford  during  the 
most  troubled  year  of  his  early  prime.  It 
was  no  strange  place  to  him,*  who  had 

*  Donne  had  been  in  residence  at  both  Universities, 
but  took  no  degree  at  either,  as  he  had  scruples  against 
accepting  the  conditions  imposed.  He  was  at  that  time, 
and  until  about  1593,  like  his  parents,  a  Catholic.  His 


been,  at  eleven,  the  Pico  della  Mirandola 
of  Hart  Hall,  and  whose  relatives  seem 
to  have  resided  always  in  the  town. 
There  and  then,  however,  he  cast  his 
bright  eye  upon  Excellence,  and  in  his 
own  phrase, 

"  — dared  love  that,  and  say  so,  too, 
And  forget  the  He  and  She." 

We  can  do  no  better  than  cite  a  cele 
brated  and  beautiful  passage,  once  more 
from  Walton  :  "  This  amity,  begun  at  this 
time  and  place,  was  not  an  amity  that 
polluted  their  souls,  but  an  amity  made 
up  of  a  chain  of  suitable  inclinations  and 
virtues;  an  amity  like  that  of  St.  Chrys- 
ostom  to  his  dear  and  virtuous  Olympias, 
whom,  in  his  letters,  he  calls  his  saint ;  or 
an  amity,  indeed,  more  like  that  of  St. 
Hierom  to  his  Paula,  whose  affection  to 
her  was  such  that  he  turned  poet  in  his 
old  age,  and  then  made  her  epitaph,  wish 
ing  all  his  body  were  turned  into  tongues 
that  he  might  declare  her  just  praises  to 


father  was  of  Welsh  descent :  a  fact  which  may  have 
borne  its  share  in  attracting  him  towards  the  Herberts. 


posterity."  How  these  words  remind 
one  of  the  sweet  historic  mention  which 
Condivi  gives  to  the  relations  between 
Vittoria  Colonna  and  Michelangelo !  The 
little  English  idyl  of  friendship  and  the 
great  Italian  one  run  parallel  in  much. 

Donne's  trenchant  Satires,  some  of  the 
earliest  and  very  best  in  the  language, 
were  already  written,  and  he  was  not  with 
out  the  hint  of  fame.  Born  in  1573,  he 
was  but  eight  years  the  senior  of  Edward 
Herbert,  and  not  more  than  a  dozen  years 
the  junior  of  Edward  Herbert's  mother. 
To  her  two  sons,  also,  who  were  to  figure 
as  men  of  letters,  he  was  sincerely  at 
tached  from  the  first,  and  had  a  marked 
and  lasting  influence  on  their  minds. 
Donne  had  the  superabundance  of  men 
tal  power  which  Mr.  Minto  has  pointed 
out  as  the  paradoxical  cause  of  his  failure 
to  become  a  great  poet.  He  was  a  three- 
storied  soul,  as  the  French  say:  a  spirit 
of  many  sides  and  moods,a  life-long  dream 
er  of  good  and  bad  dreams.  To  his  rest 
less,  incisive  intelligence  his  contempo 
raries,  with  Jonson  and  Carew  at  their 
head,  bowed  in  hyperboles  of  acclaim. 


He  had  a  changeful  conscience,  often 
antagonized  and  often  appeased.  There 
was  a  strain  in  him  of  strong  joy,  for  he 
was  descended  through  his  mother  from 
pleasant  John  Heywood  the  dramatist, 
and  from  the  father  of  that  great  and 
merry  -  hearted  gentleman,  Sir  Thomas 
More.  If  ever  man  needed  vitality  to 
buoy  him  over  sorrows  heavy  and  vast, 
it  was  Donne  in  his"yeasting  youth." 
Thrown,  through  no  fault  but  his  own, 
from  his  old  footholds  of  religion  and 
occupation,  and  unable,  despite  his  versa 
tile  and  alert  genius,  to  grind  a  steady 
living  from  the  hard  mills  of  the  world, 
he  was  in  the  midst  of  a  bitter  plight 
when  the  friends  worthy  of  him  found  a 
heavenly  opportunity  which  they  did  not 
let  go  by,  and  made  his  acceptance  of 
their  favor  a  rich  gift  unto  themselves. 
Foremost  among  these,  besides  Lady 
Herbert,  were  Sir  Robert  Drury  of  Drury 
Lane,  and  a  kinsman,  Sir  Francis  Woolly, 
of  Pirford,  Surrey,  fated  to  die  in  his  youth, 
both  of  whom  gave  the  Donnes,  for  some 
nine  consecutive  years,  the  use  of  their 
princely  houses.  John  Donne  had  been  in 


the  service  of  the  Chancellor,  Lord  Elles- 
mere,  and  lost  place  and  purse  by  the  op 
position  to  his  marriage  with  his  "  lecttssi- 
ma  dilectisstmaqiie"  Anne  More,  who  was 
Lady  Ellesmere's  niece,  the  daughter  of  Sir 
George  More  of  Loxly,  Lieutenant  of  the 
Tower,  and  probably  a  distant  cousin  of 
his  own.  No  reverses,  however,  could  beat 
the  pathetic  cheer  out  of  him.  "  Anne 
Donne,*  undone,"  was  one  of  his  inveter 
ate  teary  jests  over  the  state  of  things 
at  home.  He  wrote  once,  with  sickness, 
poverty,  and  despair  at  his  elbow:  "If 
God  should  ease  us  with  burials,  I  know 
not  how  to  perform  even  that.  But  I 
flatter  myself  that  I  am  dying,  too,  for  I 
cannot  waste  faster  than  by  such  griefs." 
Five  of  his  twelve  children  passed  before 
their  father  to  the  grave,  the  good  do 
mestic  daughter  Constance  upholding 
him  always,  and  keeping  the  house  to 
gether.  But  just  as  hope  dawned  with 
his  appointment  to  the  Lectureship  of 
Lincoln's  Inn,  heavenward  suddenly,  with 
her  youngest-born,  in  1617,  went  his  dear 

*  Anne   Donne,  it   may   be   remarked,  was  also   the 
name  of  Cowper's  mother. 

2 


i8 


and  faithful  wife,  whom  he  laid  to  rest  in 
St.  Clement  Danes. 

About  the  time  when  the  remorseful  old 
queen  died  disdainfully  on  her  chamber- 
floor  at  Richmond,  the  necessities  of  this 
family  called  for  daily  succors,  and  with 
a  simple  and  noble  delicacy  they  were 
supplied.  Nor  did  they  cease.  Magda 
len  Herbert  was  a  "  bountiful  benefactor," 
Donne  "as  grateful  an  acknowledger." 
His  first  letter  to  her  from  Mitcham  in 
Surrey, dated  July  10,  1607,  is  made  up  of 
terse,  tender  thanks,  in  his  heart's  own 
odd  language.  He  sends  her  an  enclosure 
of  sonnets  and  hymns,  "  lost  to  us,"  says 
Walton,  movingly,  "  but  doubtless  they 
were  such  as  they  two  now  sing  in 
heaven."  Dr.  Grosart,  with  a  great  show 
of  justice,  claims  that  the  sequence  called 
La  Corona,  and  familiar  to  latter-day  read 
ers,  are  the  identical  sonnets  passed  from 
one  to  the  other.  During  this  same  month 
of  July  we  know  that,  paying  a  call  in  his 
"London,  plaguey  London,"  and  finding 
his  friend  abroad,*  Dr.  Donne  consoled 

*  Sir  Richard  Baker's  Chronicle,  1684,  mentions  Dr. 


himself  by  leaving  a  courtliest  message : 
"  Your  memory  is  a  state-cloth  and  pres 
ence  which  I  reverence,  though  you  be 
away;"  and  went  back  after  to  his  "sal- 
lads  and  onions  "  at  Mitcham,  or  to  his 
solitary  lodgings  near  Whitehall. 

The  attachment,  close  and  deferent 
on  both  sides,  was  continued  without  a 
breach,  and  with  the  intention,  at  least, 
of  "  almost  daily  letters."  Thoreau,  quot 
ing  Chaucer,  so  saluted  Mrs.  Emerson : 
"  You  have  helped  to  keep  my  life  on 
loft."  No  meaner  service  than  this  was 
his  dear  lady's  to  John  Donne,  often  here 
tofore  astray  in  the  slough  of  doubt  and 
dissipation ;  she  fed  more  than  his  little 
children,  clothed  more  than  his  body,  and 
fostered  anew  in  him  that  faith  in  hu 
manity  which  is  the  well-spring  of  good 
works.  He  was  not  a  poet  of  Leigh 
Hunt's  innocent  temperament,  who  could 
accept  benefits  gladly  and  gracefully  from 
any  appreciator ;  his  soul  dwelt  too  re 
mote  and  proud  in  her  accustomed  cita 
dels.  But  this  loving  help,  thrust  upon 

Donne  as  one  of  his  "  heroic  Grecians,"  and  adds,  in 
the  same  breath,  that  he  was  "  a  great  visitor  of  ladies." 


him,  he  took  with  dignity,  and  after  1621, 
when  he  was  able,  in  his  own  person,  to 
befriend  others,  he  gave  back  gallantly 
to  mankind  the  blessings  he  once  re 
ceived  from  two  or  three.  It  was  some 
thing  for  Magdalen  Herbert  to  have  saved 
a  master -name  to  English  letters,  and 
kept  in  his  unique  place  the  poet,  inter 
esting  beyond  many,  whose  fantastic  but 
real  force  swayed  generations  of  think 
ing  and  singing  men  ;  it  was  something, 
also,  to  have  won  in  return  the  words 
which  were  his  gold  coin  of  payment. 
Nowhere  is  Donne's  sentiment  more  gen 
uine,  his  workmanship  more  happy  and 
less  complex,  than  in  the  verses  dedicated 
to  her  blameless  name.  They  have  a  lucid 
ity  unsurpassed  among  the  yet  straight 
forward  lyrics  of  their  day.  Drayton's  self, 
who  died  in  the  same  year  with  Donne, 
might  have  addressed  to  the  lady  of  Eyton 
so  much  of  his  noble  extravagance ; 

"Queens  hereafter  shall  be  glad  to  live 
Upon  the  alms  of  thy  superfluous  praise." 

Yet  in  these  eulogies,  as  in  most  of  the 
graver  contemporaneous  poems  of  the 


sort,  there  is  little  personality  to  be  de 
tected  ;  the  homage  has  rather  a  floating 
outline,  an  unapproaching  music,  exqui 
site  and  awed.  Donne  gives,  sometimes, 
the  large  Elizabethan  measure  : 

"  Is  there  any  good  which  is  not  she?" 

In  the  so-called  Elegy,  The  Autumnal, 
written  on  leaving  Oxford,  he  starts  off 
with  a  well-known  cherishable  strophe  : 

"No  spring  nor  summer  beauty  hath  such  grace 
As  I  have  seen  in  one  autumnal  face." 

The  entire  poem  is  a  monody  on  the  en 
croachments  of  years,  and  neatly  chrono 
logical  : 

"If  we  love  things  long-sought,  age  is  a  thing 
Which  we  are  fifty  years  in  compassing; 
If  transitory  things,  which  soon  decay, 
Age  must  be  loveliest  at  the  latest  day." 

It  strikes  the  modern  ear  as  maladroit 
enough  that  a  woman  in  her  yet  sunshiny 
forties,  and  a  most  comely  woman  to 
boot,  should  have  required  prosody's  in 
genious  excuses  for  wrinkles  and  kindred 
damages.  Was  life  so  hard  as  that  in 
"  the  spacious  days  "  ?  Shakespeare,  in 


agreement  with  Horace,  had  already  re 
minded  his  handsome  "  Will  "  of  the  piti 
less  and  too  expeditious  hour, 

"  When  forty  winters  shall  besiege  thy  brow, 
And  dig  deep  trenches  in  thy  beauty's  field!" 

which  also  seems,  to  a  nice  historical 
sense,  somewhat  staggering.  The  close 
of  Donne's  little  homily  is  perfect,  and  full 
of  the  winning  melancholy  which  was 
part  of  his  birthright  in  art,  whenever  he 
allowed  himself  direct  and  homely  ex 
pression  : 

"  May  still 

My  love  descend !  and  journey  down  the  hill, 
Not  panting  after  growing  beauties;  so 
I  shall  ebb  on  with  them  who  homeward  go." 

Such  was  John  Donne's  first  known  trib 
ute  to  his  friend.  She  must  have  been 
early  and  thoroughly  familiar  with  his 
manuscripts,  which  were  passed  about 
freely,  Dr.  Grosart  thinks,  prior  to  1613, 
and  which  burned  what  Massinger  would 
call  "no  adulterate  incense"  to  herself. 
Her  bays  are  to  be  gleaned  off  many  a 
tree,  and  she  must  have  cast  a  frequent 
influence  on  Donne's  work,  which  is  not 


traceable  now.  He  seems  to  have  had 
a  Crashaw-like  devotion  to  the  Christian 
saint  whose  inheritance 

"  Bethina  was,  and  jointure  Magdalo," 

not  unconnected  with  the  fact  that  some 
one  else  was  Magdalen  also ;  never  does 
he  tire  of  dwelling  on  the  coincidence 
and  the  difference.  In  one  of  his  quaint 
ly  moralizing  songs,  he  goes  seeking  a 
"true-love"  primrose,  where  but  on 
Montgomery  Hill !  for  he  is  hers,  by  all 
chivalrous  tokens,  as  much  as  he  may  be. 
Again  he  cites,  and  almost  with  humor  : 

"  that  perplexing  eye 
Which  equally  claims  love  and  reverence." 

And  his  platonics  make  their  honorable 
challenge  at  the  end  of  some  fine  lines  : 

"  So  much  do  I  love  her  choice,  that  I 
Would  fain  love  him  that  shall  be  loved  of  her!" 

There  was  prescience  in  that  couplet.  As 
early,  at  least,  as  1607-8,  the  widow's  long 
privacy  ended,  probably  while  she  was  at 
her  "howse  at  Charing  Cross,"  watching 
over  the  progress  of  her  son  George  at 


Westminster  School ;  and  he  that  was 
"  loved  of  her"  was  the  grandson  of  the 
last  Lord  Latimer  of  the  Nevilles,  junior 
brother  of  a  nobleman  who  perished  with 
Essex  in  1602,  and  brother  and  heir  of 
that  Sir  Plenry  Danvers  who  was  created 
Earl  of  Danby  in  1625  for  his  services  in 
Ireland,  and  who  literally  left  a  green 
memory  as  the  founder  of  the  pleasant 
Physic  Gardens  at  Oxford.  The  name 
of  Danvers,  the  kindly  step-father,  is  one 
of  the  noteworthy  omissions  of  Lord  Her 
bert  of  Cherbury's  Autobiography.  But 
George  Herbert  was  devoted  to  him,  as 
his  many  letters  show,  and  turned  to 
him,  never  in  vain,  during  his  restless 
years  at  Cambridge ;  and  into  his  circle 
of  relatives,  with  romantic  suddenness, 
he  afterwards  married.  Sir  John  Dan 
vers,  of  Dauntsey,  Wilts,  was  twenty  years 
younger  than  his  wife.  It  is  worth  while 
to  quote  the  very  deft  and  courtly  state 
ment  of  the  case  made  at  the  last  by  Dr. 
Donne :  "  The  natural  endowments  of 
her  person  were  such  as  had  their  part 
in  drawing  and  fixing  the  affections  of 
such  a  person  as  by  his  birth  and  youth 


and  interest  in  great  favors  at  court,  and 
legal  proximity  to  great  possessions  in 
the  world,  might  justly  have  promised 
him  acceptance  in  what  family  soever, 
or  upon  what  person  soever,  he  had  di 
rected.  .  .  .  He  placed  them  here,  neither 
diverted  thence,  nor  repented  since.  For 
as  the  well -tuning  of  an  instrument 
makes  higher  and  lower  strings  of  one 
sound,  so  the  inequality  of  their  years 
was  thus  reduced  to  an  evenness,  that 
she  had  a  cheerfulness  agreeable  to  his 
youth,  and  he  had  a  sober  staidness  con 
formable  to  her  more  advanced  years. 
So  that  I  would  not  consider  her  at  so 
much  more  than  forty,  nor  him  at  so 
much  less  than  thirty,  at  that  time  ;  but 
as  their  persons  were  made  one  and  their 
fortunes  made  one  by  marriage,  so  I 
would  put  their  years  into  one  number, 
and  finding  a  sixty  between  them,  think 
them  thirty  apiece ;  for  as  twins  of  one 
hour  they  lived."* 

*  Dr.  Donne's  conceit  about  the  ages  of  his  friends  is 
better  handled  in  the  young  Cartwright's 

"  Chloe,  why  wish  you  that  your  years," 
a  little  later.     It  is  not  impossible  that  Cartwright,  an 


26 


In  the  August  of  1607,  a  masque  by 
John  Marston  was  given  in  the  now  ru 
ined  castle  of  Ashby-de-la-Zouch,  eigh 
teen  miles  from  Leicester,  as  an  enter 
tainment  devised  by  Lord  Huntingdon 
and  his  young  wife,  the  Lady  Elizabeth 
Stanley,  to  welcome  her  mother,  Alice, 
Countess -Dowager  of  Derby,*  "the  first 
night  of  her  honor's  arrival  at  the  house 
of  Ashby."  Fourteen  noble  ladies  took 
part  in  the  masque,  and  among  them  was 
"  Mris  Da'vers."  The  name  may,  perhaps, 
be  recognized  as  that  of  the  subject  of 
this  sketch,  for  Sir  John  Danvers  was  not 
knighted  until  the  following  year;  and 
it  has  been  so  recognized  by  interested 

Oxonian  and  an  observer,  may  have  drawn  upon  Donne's 
report  of  this  very  wedding  for  his  charming  and  ingen 
ious  lyric. 

*  This  august  personage  was  one  of  the  Spencers  of 
Althorp.  At  this  time  she  had  been  for  six  years  the 
wife  of  her  second  husband,  the  Lord  Keeper  Egerton, 
although  retaining  the  magnificent  title  of  her  widow 
hood.  At  their  estate  of  Harefield  in  Middlesex,  Milton's 
Arcades  was  afterwards  given,  and  it  will  be  remembered 
what  fine  compliments  to  the  then  aged  countess-dowa 
ger  figure  in  its  opening  verses.  Spenser's  Teares  of  the 
Muses  had  been  dedicated  to  her,  in  her  prime,  and  she 
was  the  Amaryllis  "highest  in  degree"  of  his  Colin 
Clouts  Come  Home  Again. 


scholars  who  have  searched  Nichols's 
Progresses  of  James  I.  And  yet  we  can 
not  be  too  sure  that  we  have  her  before 
us,  in  the  wreaths  and  picturesque  dra 
peries  of  the  amateur  stage  ;  for  there 
was  another  Mistress  Da'vers  at  court, 
whose  purported  letter,  dated  February 
3,  1613,  signed  with  her  confusing  Chris 
tian  names  of  "  Mary  Magdaline,"  gave 
great  trouble,  thirty  years  ago,  to  the  ex 
perts  of  the  Camden  Society.  Besides, 
a  letter  of  the  good  gossipy  Chamberlain, 
dated  March  3,  1608-9,  mentions  as  if  it 
were  then  a  piece  of  fresh  news :  "  Young 
Davers  is  likewise  wedded  to  the  widow 
Herbert,  Sir  Edward's  mother,  of  more 
than  twice  his  age."  This  would  seem 
to  preclude  the  possibility  of  the  fair 
masquer  being  the  same  person. 

The  mother  of  many  Herberts,  the 
"  more  than  forty  "  bride,  was  by  nature 
a  home-keeping  character.  Among  the 
correspondence  relating  to  Lord  Herbert 
of  Cherbury,  privately  printed  in  1886  by 
the  Earl  of  Powis,  are  a  few  pages  which 
give  us  invaluable  glimpses  of  the  Lon 
don  household.  Lady  Danvers's  eldest 


28 


son,  who  set  off  upon  his  travels  soon 
after  her  second  marriage,  and  who  applied 
himself  vigorously  to  the  various  diver 
sions  of  body  and  mind  catalogued  in 
the  Autobiography,  found  himself  often 
pinched  for  money.  In  such  a  strait,  not 
unfamiliar  to  other  fine  gentlemen  of  his 
day,  he  invariably  appealed  to  the  servi 
ces  of  the  step-father  who  was  his  junior, 
in  England.  The  latter,  writing  how 
"  wee  are  all  some  what  after  the  olde 
manner,  and  doe  hartely  wish  you  well," 
seems  to  have  busied  himself  to  some 
avail,  in  concert  with  his  brother-in-law, 
Sir  Francis  Newport  (the  first  Lord 
Newport),  in  securing  letters  of  credit  to 
Milan,  Turin,  the  Netherlands,  and  else 
where,  and  in  explaining  at  length,  in  his 
long  involved  sentences,  how  matters 
could  be  bettered.  Whether  or  not  the 
absent  Knight  of  the  Bath  had  reason 
to  suspect  Sir  John's  disinterested  action 
when  it  came  to  the  handling  of  pounds 
and  pence,  he  does  not  seem,  then  or 
after,  to  have  burdened  him  with  any 
great  harvest  of  thanks.  But  Sir  John's 
faithful  wife  knew  how  to  defend  him,  in 


a  script  of  May  12,  1615,  which  may  be 
quoted  precisely  as  it  stands  in  the  Her 
bert  papers. 

"To  my  best  beloved  sonn,  S'r  Edward  Her 
bert,  Knight, 
"  My  deare  Sonn, 

it  is  straunge  to  me  to  here 
you  to  complayne  of  want  of  care  of  you  in 
your  absence  when  my  thoughts  are  seldom  re 
moved  from  you  which  must  assuredly  set  me 
aworkinge  of  any  thinge  may  doe  you  good,  & 
for  writinge  the  one  of  us  yf  not  both  never 
let  messenges  pass  without  letter,  your  stay 
abroad  is  so  short  in  any  one  place  &  we  so 
unhappy  in  givinge  you  contentment  as  our  let 
ters  com  not  to  your  hands  which  we  are  sorry 
for.  And  to  tel  you  further  of  S'r  John  Da'- 
vers  Love  which  I  dare  sweare  is  to  no  man 
more,  he  is  &  hath  beene  so  careful  to  keep 
you  from  lake  of  money  now  you  are  abroad  as 
your  Bay  life  faylinge  payment  as  they  continu 
ally  doe  &  pay  no  man,  he  goeth  to  your  Mer- 
chaunt,  offers  him  self  &  all  the  powers  he 
can  make  to  supply  you  as  your  occasions  may 
require,  mistake  him  not,  but  beleeve  me  there 
was  never  a  tenderer  hart  or  a  lovinger  minde 
in  any  man  then  is  in  him  towards  you  who 
have  power  to  com'aund  him  &  all  that  is  his. 


Now  for  your  Baylifs  I  must  tell  you  they  have 
not  yet  payed  your  brothers  all  their  Anuities 
due  at  Midsom'er  past  &  but  half  due  at 
Christmas  last  and  no  news  of  the  rest,  this  yf 
advauntage  were  taken  might  be  preiuditiall  to 
you  and  it  is  ill  for  your  Brothers  &  very  ill 
you  have  such  officers. 

"  I  hope  it  will  bringe  you  home  &  that  is 
all  the  good  can  com  of  this.  your  sister 
Johnes  hath  long  beene  sicke  &  within  this 
8  dayes  hath  brought  a  boy  she  is  so  weake  as 
she  is  much  feared  by  those  aboute  her.  my 
Lady  Vachell  lyes  now  adyeinge  the  bell  hath 
twice  gone  for  her.  your  wife  &  sweet  chil 
dren  are  well  &  herein  I  send  you  little  Flor 
ence  letter  to  see  what  comfort  you  may  have 
of  your  deare  children,  let  them,  my  Dear 
sonn,  draw  you  home  &  affoorde  them  your 
care  and  me  your  comfort  that  desire  more  to 
see  you  then  I  desire  any  thinge  ells  in  the 
world,  and  now  I  end  with  my  dayly  prayer 
for  your  health  and  safe  retorne  to  Your  ever 
lovinge  mother,  Magd  :  Da'vers. 

' '  I  have  received  the  Pattent  of  your  Br : 

William,  &  S'r  John  hath  beene  with  the  am- 

bassatore  who  stayes  for  S'r  James  Sandaline  * 

his  cominge." 

*  Sir  James   Sandelyn,  Sandalo,  or   Sandilands   (who 


A  sympathizing  reader,  aware  of  se 
quences,  may  wonder  whence  Sir  John 
drew  "  all  the  powers  he  can  make  " !  The 
dignified  letter,  with  its  undulating  syn 
tax  and  thrifty  punctuation,  harmonizes 
with  all  we  know  of  this  delightful  wom 
an,  who  could  so  reproach  what  she 
deemed  a  shortcoming,  without  a  touch 
of  temper.  How  affectionate  is  the  ref 
erence  to  the  "little  Florence"  who  died 
young,  and  to  the  other  children,  suffi 
ciently  precious  to  all  that  household,  ex 
cept  to  the  wool-gathering  chevalier  their 
father,  far  away !  Their  innocent  faces 
peer  again  through  a  sweet  postscript  of 
their  grand -uncle:  ("Dick  is  here,  Ned 
and  Bettye  at  Haughmond,")  written  in 
the  winter,  from  Eyton,  to  the  truant  at 


cuts  his  finest  figure  as  Jacobus  Sandilandius  in  The 
Muses'  Welcome)  was  appointed  Maistre  d' Hostel  to  the 
beloved  and  beautiful  Princess  Elizabeth  on  her  marriage 
to  Frederic,  Count  Palatine  of  the  Rhine,  afterwards 
King  of  Bohemia,  in  1612.  As  Sir  James's  name  is  down 
on  the  lists  of  the  Exchequer  for  a  gift  in  1615,  and  as  his 
little  son  Richard  was  baptized  in  Deptford  Church  two 
months  after  the  date  of  Lady  Danvers's  letter,  we  may 
conclude  that  he  came  back  to  England  just  when  the 
"  ambassatore  "  expected  him. 


the  Hague.*  This  same  genial  Sir  Fran 
cis  Newport,  "  imoderately  desyring  to 
see  you,"  confides  to  his  nephew,  during 
what  he  complains  of  as  "  a  verye  drye 
and  hott  time"!  for  Shropshire  farmers, 
that  "  mye  syster  your  mother  is  confi 
dent  to  take  a  iourney  into  these  pts  this 
somer,  the  rather,  I  think,  because  yo'r 
brother  Vaugh'n  is  dead  &  if  yo'  have 
a  willing  harte  you  maye  come  tyme 
enough  to  acco'pany  her  heare,  &  would 
not  then  the  companye  bee  much  the 
better  ?"  But  we  fear  the  little  excursion 
never  came  off.  Edward  Herbert's  next 
visit  to  his  home,  presumably  after  a  four- 
years'  absence,  was  in  1619;  and  in  May 
of  that  year  he  accepted  the  office  of 
Ambassador  to  France,  and  spread  his 

*  Edward  Herbert  served  as  a  volunteer  in  the  cam 
paign  of  1614-15  in  the  Netherlands,  under  the  Prince  of 
Orange.  Richard  Herbert,  here  mentioned,  was  his  eld 
est  son,  a  future  Cavalier  and  captain  of  a  troop  of  horse 
in  the  Civil  Wars  ;  Edward  was  the  baby,  and  "  Bettye  " 
the  child  Beatrice,  destined,  like  her  sister,  to  a  short 
life. 

t  This  1614-15  was  an  eccentric  and  un-English  year 
throughout.  The  winter  signalized  itself  by  the  Great 
Snow;  "frigiis  intension"  as  Camden  says,  "rf  nix 
copiosissima" 


33 


ready  wing  again  to  the  Continent.  And 
the  Athena*  Oxoniensts  will  not  let  us  for 
get  that  the  too  spirited  envoy  had  to  be 
temporarily  recalled  in  1621,  because  he 
had  "  irreverently  treated  "  De  Luynes, 
the  powerful  but  good-for-nothing  Con 
stable  of  France.  It  is  not  insignificant 
that  this  was  the  year  in  which  George 
Herbert  wrote  to  his  mother  in  one  of  his 
consoling  moods,  bidding  her  be  of  good 
cheer,  albeit  her  health  and  wealth  were 
gone,  and  the  conduct  of  her  children 
was  not  very  satisfying ! 

We  know  that  Lady  Danvers  had  the 
"  honor,  love,  obedience,  troops  of  friends  " 
which  became  her,  and  that  she  lost  none 
of  her  influence,  none  of  her  serene  charm. 
Her  poet  was  much  with  her  in  his  ad 
vancing  age.  In  July,  1625,  while  the 
plague  was  raging  in  London,  Donne  re 
minded  Sir  Henry  Wotton  of  the  leisure 
he  enjoyed,  golden  as  Cicero's,  by  dating 
his  letter  "  from  S'r  John  Davor's  house 
at  Chelsey,  of  w'ich  house  &  my  Lord 
Carlil's  at  Hanworth  I  make  up  my  Tus- 
culum."  Many  a  peaceful  evening  must 
they  have  passed  upon  the  terraces,  with- 

'3 


in  sound  of  the  solemn  songs  always  dear 
to  both.  Visitors  yet  more  illustrious 
came  there  from  the  city ;  for  the  noble 
hostess  had  once  the  privilege  of  reviv 
ing  the  great  Lord  Bacon,*  who  had  faint 
ed  in  her  garden.  We  learn,  with  sym 
pathy,  that  "sickness,  in  the  declination 
of  her  years,  had  opened  her  to  an  over 
flowing  of  melancholy  ;  not  that  she  ever 
lay  under  that  water,  but  yet  had,  some 
times,  some  high  tides  of  it."  Death 
chose  Dr.  Donne's  ministering  angel  be 
fore  him,  after  thirty  years  of  mutual 
fealty.  Her  restless  son  Edward,  now  at 
home,  was  already  eminent,  and  wearing 
his  little  Irish  title  of  Baron  Castleisland; 
her  thoughtful  Charles  was  long  dead  ; 
her  brother,  also,  was  no  more ;  her 
daughters  were  matrons,  and  dwelling  in 
prosperity.  With  but  one  unfulfilled  wish, 
that  of  seeing  her  favorite  George  mar 
ried  and  in  holy  orders,!  and  after  a  life 

*  Lord  Bacon  dedicated  to  Edward  Herbert,  "the  fa 
ther  of  English  deists,"  his  very  flat  translation  of  the 
Psalms !  George  wrote  three  Latin  poems  in  his  honor, 
one  being  upon  the  occasion  of  his  death. 

t  He  was,  in  July  of  1626,  ordained  deacon,  and  preb- 


35 


which  left  a  wake  of  synshine  behind 
it  in  the  world,  very  patiently  and  hope 
fully  Magdalen  Newport,  Lady  Danvers, 
entered  upon  eternity,  in  the  early  June  of 
1627.  On  the  eighth  day  of  the  month, 
in  St.  Luke's,  the  parish  church  of  Chel 
sea,  she  was  buried  : 

"  Old  age  with  snow-bright  hair,  and  folded  palm," 

the  final  earthly  glimpse  of  her  still 
traditionally  beautiful.  On  the  first  of 
July  her  faithful  liegeman,  now  Dean  of 
St.  Paul's  and  Vicar  of  St.  Dunstan-in-the- 
West,  preached  her  funeral  sermon  there, 
before  a  crowd  of  the  great  ones  of  Lon 
don,  the  clergy,  and  the  poor.  Izaak 
Walton's  kind  face  looked  up  from  a  near 
pew,  whence  he  saw  Dr.  Donne's  tears, 
and  felt  his  breaking  voice,  the  voice  of 
one  who  did  not  belie  his  friend,  nigh  the 
end  of  his  own  pilgrimage.  In  present 
grief  and  among  graver  memories,  he  had 
the  true  perception  not  to  forget  how 
joyous  she  had  been.  "  She  died,"  he  said, 

endary  of  Layton  Ecclesia  in  Huntingdonshire.  Read 
ers  of  Walton  will  remember  how  his  dear  mother  invit 
ed  him  to  commit  simony  on  that  occasion. 


"without  any  change  of  countenance  or 
posture,  without  any  struggling,  any  disor 
der,  .  .  .  and  expected  that  which  she  hath 
received  :  God's  physic  and  God's  music, 
a  Christianly  death.  .  .  .  She  was  eyes  to 
the  blind,  and  feet  to  the  lame,  .  .  .  natu 
rally  cheerful  and  merry,  and  loving  face- 
tiousness  and  sharpness  of  wit."  His 
own  fund  of  mirth  and  strength  was  fast 
going  ;  and  a  haunting  line  of  his  youth, 

"And  all  my  pleasures  are  like  yesterday," 

must  have  reverted  to  him  many  and 
many  a  time.  Morbid  and  persistent 
thoughts  beset  him  from  this  hour,  prob 
ably,  more  than  ever,  until  he  had  the  ef 
figy  of  himself,  painted  as  he  was,  laid  in 
his  failing  sight  ;*  morbid  and  persistent 
thoughts  of  the  ruin  which  befalls  the 
bright  bodies  of  humanity,  sometimes 

*  The  standing  marble  figure  in  a  winding-sheet  which 
Dr.  King  had  modelled  upon  this  strange  painting  on  wood, 
may  yet  be  seen  in  the  south  ambulatory  of  the  choir  of 
St.  Paul's  ;  almost  the  only  relic  saved  from  the  old  cathe 
dral  which  perished  in  the  Great  Fire  of  1666.  It  is  not 
only  of  unique  interest,  but  of  considerable  artistic  beauty, 
and  "  seems  to  breathe  faintly,"  as  Sir  Henry  Wotton  said 
ofit. 


surging  up  in  his  loneliness,  and  crowd 
ing  out  the  better  vision  which  yet  may 
"grace  us  in  the  disgrace  of  death."  His 
inward  eye  was  drawn  strongly  to  his 
friend's  sepulchre,  sealed  and  sombre  be 
fore  him,  and  to  what  had  been  her,  "  go 
ing  into  dust  now  almost  a  month  of 
days,  almost  a  lunar  year. .  . .  which,  while 
I  speak,  is  mouldering  and  crumbling  into 
less  and  less  dust."  But  he  ended  in  a 
wholesomer  strain,  subdued  and  calm  : 
"  This  good  soul  being  thus  laid  down 
to  sleep  in  His  peace,  '  I  charge  you,  O 
daughters  of  Jerusalem,  that  ye  wake  her 
not!'" 

The  rare  little  duodecimo  which  con 
tains  Lady  Danvers's  funeral  sermon  was 
printed  soon  after,  "  together  with  other 
Commemorations  of  Her,  by  her  Sonne 
G.  Herbert,"  and  offered  to  the  public  at 
the  Golden  Lion  in  Paul's  Churchyard. 
The  commemorations  are  in  Greek  and 
Latin.  Strangely  enough,  nowhere  is  the 
sweet  and  sage  poet  of  The  Temple  so  set 
upon  his  prosody,  so  given  to  awkward 
pagan  conceits,  so  out  of  tune  with  the 
ideals  of  classic  diction.  But  he,  who 


tenderly  loved  his  mother,  has  given  to 
us,  in  the  Memories  Matris  Sacrum,  sev 
eral  precious  personal  fragments,  and  one 
more  precious  whole  picture  of  daily  hab 
its  in  the  lines  beginning  Cornelia;  sanc- 
t<z :  her  morning  prayer,  her  bath,  and 
the  plaiting  of  her  glossy  hair  ;  her  house 
wifely  cares,  her  fit  replies,  her  writing  to 
her  friends,  her  passion  for  music,  her 
gentle  helpfulness;  the  long  felicity  of  a 
glad  and  stainless  life, 

"Quicquid  habet  tellus,  quicquid  et  astra,  fruens." 

Dr.  Donne  died  in  1631,  whatever  was 
yet  of  earth  in  his  spirit  healed  and  chas 
tened  by  long  pain.  His  last  remem 
brance  to  some  he  loved  was  his  own 
seal  of  Christ  on  the  Anchor,  "  engraven 
very  small  on  heliotropium  stones,  and 
set  in  gold,  for  rings."  Many  of  those  to 
whom  his  heart  would  have  turned,  the 
"  autumnal  beauty  "  scarce  second  among 
them,  had  preceded  him  out  of  England. 
But  in  travelling  towards  his  Maker,  he 
had  that  other  sacred  hope  to  "  ebb  on 
with  them,"  and  gloriously  overtake  them, 
as  he  traced  the  epitaph  which  covered 


39 


him  in  old  St.  Paul's  :  "  Hie  licet  in  oc- 
ciduo  cinere,  aspicit  eum  cujus  nomen  est 
Oriens."  The  tie  between  himself  and 
her  was  not  unremembered  in  the  next 
generation  ;  for  we  find  John  Donne  the 
younger  dedicating  his  father's  posthu 
mous  work  to  Francis,  Lord  Newport,  and 
when  making  his  will,  in  1662,  bequeath 
ing  also  to  the  same  Lord  Newport  "  the 
picture  of  St.  Anthony  in  a  round  frame." 
And  thus,  in  a  revived  fragrance,  the  an 
nals  of  true  friendship  close. 

These  rapid,  ragged  strokes  of  a  pen 
make  the  only  possible  biography  of 
Lady  Danvers.  When  Walton  wrote  of 
her,  he  had  the  entire  correspondence 
with  Dr.  Donne  before  him.*  "  There  were 
sacred  endearments  betwixt  these  two  ex 
cellent  persons,"  he  assures  us,  but  disap 
pointingly  hurries  on  into  the  highway  of 
his  subject.  It  is  curious  that  it  seems 
impossible  now  to  trace  these  breathing 
relics,  or  others  from  the  same  source; 

*  Dr.  Donne's  papers  were  bequeathed  to  Dr.  Henry 
King,  the  poet-Bishop  of  Chichester,  then  residentiary  of 
St.  Paul's.  The  "  find"  were  a  precious  one,  if  they  yet 
survive. 


for  George  Herbert,  in  the  second  elegy 
of  the  Parentalia,  has  much  to  say,  and 
very  sweetly,  of  the  industry  of  his  moth 
er's  "white  right  hand,"  and  of  the  "  many 
and  most  notable  letters,  flying  over  all 
the  world."  Much  detail  is  utterly  lost 
which  men  who  agree  with  Prosper 
Merimee  that  all  Thucydides  would  not 
be  worth  an  authentic  memoir  of  As- 
pasia,  or  even  of  one  of  the  slaves  of 
Pericles,  might  be  glad  to  remember.  A 
copy  of  a  song,  a  reminiscence  of  the 
glow  and  stir  of  the  days  through  which 
she  moved,  a  guess  through  a  mist  at  the 
blond  head,*  the  half-imperious  carriage, 
the  open  hand,  as  she  went  her  ways,  like 
Dante's  lovely  lady,  sentendosi  laudare  — 
these  are  all  we  have  of  the  daughter  of 
England's  golden  age.  It  would  be  easy, 

*  The  half-romantic  reference,  which  occurs  more  than 
once  in  Donne's  poems,  to-  his  own  long-dead  arm  which 
still  shall  keep 

"The  bracelet  of  bright  hair  about  the  bone," — 

has  it  nothing  to  do  with  this  blond  head  ?  Honi  soit 
qui  mal  y  flense.  The  internal  evidences  in  The  Relic. 
with  its  mention  of  St.  Mary  Magdalen,  and  its  boast  ot 
purest  friendship,  and  the  roguery  of  the  closing  line  in 
The  Futieral,  are  somewhat  strong,  nevertheless. 


were  it  also  just,  to  throw  a  dash  of  color 
into  her  shadowy  history.  One  would 
like  to  verify  the  scene  at  Eyton,  while 
the  news  of  the  coming  Armada  roused 
the  lion  in  Drake,  and  struck  terror  into 
the  Devon  towns  ;  and  to  hear  the  young 
wife,  with  three  lisping  Herberts  at  her 
knee,  beguile  them  with  mellow  contral 
to  snatches  of  a  Robin  Hood  ballad,  or 
with  the  sweet  yesterday's  tale  of  Zut- 
phen,  where  their  country's  dearest  gave 
his  cup  of  water  to  a  dying  comrade.  A 
decade  later,  before  their  handsome  bluff 
father,  her  other  healthful  boys  stood  up 
to  wrestle,  and  twang  their  arrows  at 
forty  paces ;  or  a  rosy  daughter  stole  to 
his  side,  and  asked  him  of  mishaps  in  Ire 
land,  or  of  the  giant  laughter  bubbling 
from  the  "  oracle  of  Apollo  "  in  a  London 
street.  It  is  to  be  believed  that  one  who 
watched  events  through  the  insurrection 
of  Essex,  through  Raleigh's  dramatic  trial, 
reprieve,  and  execution,  through  the  na 
tional  mourning  for  the  Prince  of  Wales, 
through  the  fever  for  colonization,  the 
savage  sea-fights,  the  great  intrigues  in 
behalf  of  the  Queen  of  Scots,  the  relig- 


ious  divisions,  the  muttering  parliamen 
tary  thunders,  the  stress  and  heat  of  the 
exciting  dawn  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
was  not  unmindful  of  all  it  meant  to  be 
alive,  there  and  then.  Magdalen  New 
port's  girlhood  fell  on  Lyly's  Enphues, 
fresh  from  the  printers ;  the  Arcadia 
made  the  talk  of  Oxford,  in  her  prime; 
the  dusky  splendor  of  Marlowe's  Faustus 
was  abroad  before  her  second  marriage. 
She  was,  surely,  aware  of  Shakespeare, 
and  of  the  wonder-folio  of  1623;  of  the 
newest  delighting  madrigals  and  anti- 
phons  set  forth  by  one  Robert  Jones, 
when  every  soul  in  England  had  the  gift 
of  music ;  of  rascal  Robert  Greene's  lov 
able  lyrics,  of  Wyatt's,  Campion's,  and 
Drayton's.  She  wrote  no  verses,  indeed, 
but  her  familiars  wrote  them  ;  her  every 
step  jostled  a  Muse.  We  may  assume 
that  no  growth  nor  loss  in  literary  circles 
escaped  that  tender  "  perplexing  eye." 
Perhaps  it  glistened  from  a  bench,  in  the 
pioneer  British  theatre,  on  the  actors  of 
Volpone,  and  followed  silently,  behind  the 
royal  group,  the  first  mincings  of  the  first 
dear  Fool  in  King  Lear,  one  day-after- 


43 


Christmas  at  Whitehall.  Last  of  all,  for 
whim's  sake,  how  any  sociologist  would 
enjoy  having  the  honest  opinion  of  young 
Lady  Herbert,  or  that  of  little  Mistress 
Donne,  concerning  the  person  they  could 
but  thank  and  praise  !  Utinam  vivisset 
Pepys !  It  is  a  cheat  of  history  that  it 
preserves  no  clearer  tint  or  trace  of  this 
chosen  passer-by.  Such,  in  truth,  she 
was,  and  the  quiet  vanishing  name  clings 
to  her:  the  woman  of  durable  gladness, 
happily  born  and  taught,  like  the  soul 
whereof  Sir  Henry  Wotton,  who  must  have 
known  her  well,  made  his  immortal  song. 
Of  the  gracious  figure  of  Sir  John  Dan- 
vers  we  may  be  said  to  lose  sight ;  for  he 
seems  less  gracious,  as  by  a  Hindoo  trick, 
as  soon  as  it  is  written  that  his  wife 
departed  unto  her  reward.  Comment 
on  his  character  is  equal  comment  upon 
hers,  and  adds  new  force  to  the  classic 
episode  of  a  lady  philanthropist  espous 
ing  a  ne'er-do-weel  and  a  featherbrain. 
Aubrey,  always  happy  over  a  little  ultra- 
contemporary  gossip,  calls  it  "  a  disagree 
able  match,"  disappointing  to  the  bride 
groom's  kindred;  but  adds  that  "he 


married  her  for  love  of  her  wit."  Now, 
wit  is  an  admirable  magnet,  but  it  is  to 
be  suspected  that  there  was  also,  and  in 
the  immediate  vicinity,  "  metal  more  at 
tractive,"  as  Hamlet  says.  In  the  Chelsea 
parish-books  is  an  entry,  the  first  of  its 
kind,  certifying  that  Sir  John  Danvers  had 
settled  his  account  with  "  the  poore,"  a 
matter  of  thirty  pounds'  loan  (in  which 
the  vicar  must  have  connived),  for  the 
year  ending  in  January  of  1628.  If  the 
payment  were,  by  any  hap,  in  advance,  it 
may  have  fallen  in  Lady  Danvers's  own 
lifetime  ;  and  if  so,  it  is  quite  as  likely  that 
she  paid  it,  with  an  admonition  !  Her 
"  high  tides  of  melancholy,"  of  whose 
true  cause  she  certainly  would  not  have 
complained  to  Dr.  Donne,  had  some 
thing  to  do  with  this  young  spendthrift, 
who  must  have  had  his  wheedling  way, 
sooner  or  later,  with  such  of  her  am 
ple  revenues  as  were  yet  extant.  Per 
haps  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury  was 
both  shrewd  and  charitable,  in  suppress 
ing  mention  of  his  new  relative.*  The 

*  The  famous  Autobiography,  indeed,  boldly  assures 
posterity  that  Lady  Herbert,  after  1597,  "continued  un- 


45 


longer  one  looks  into  the  matter,  the 
less  curious  seems  his  unexplained  silence 
concerning  this  late  graft  of  a  family 
hitherto  always  respectable  and  always 
loyal. 

There  are  gleams  of  subsequent  private 
history  in  the  tell-tale  records  at  Chelsea. 
We  are  not  incurably  astonished  to  learn 
that  as  early  as  May  of  1629  was  chris 
tened  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  Sir  John 
Danvers  and  Elizabeth  his  wife.  This 
Lady  Elizabeth,  arriving  providentially 
with  her  Dauntsey  wealth,  having  borne 
him  four  children,  died,  as  did  his  moth 
er,  in  1636;  and  left  him  even  as  she 
found  him,  none  too  monogamous.  In 
1648  Sir  John  Danvers  again*  appeared 
at  the  venerable  altars  where  his  first 
saint  never  had  a  memorial,  loving,  hon 
oring,  and  cherishing  a  Mrs.  Grace  Hewes, 
Hawes,  or  Hewet,  of  Kemerton  in  Glouces 
tershire,  and,  as  it  is  to  be  surmised,  lead- 
married,"  and,  in  brief,  "  was  the  woman  Dr.  Donne  hath 
described  her."  The  acknowledgment  of  the  accuracy  of 
that  funeral  sermon,  containing,  as  it  does,  its  very  specific 
Danvers  passages,  is  in  our  fearless  philosopher's  best 
style. 


ing  her  tame  fortune  by  a  ribbon.  His 
debts  and  difficulties,  not  of  one  but  of 
all  time,  sprout  perennially  in  the  regis 
ters.  His  indefatigable  name,  oftener 
than  any  rival's  whatsoever,  figures  as 
borrowing  and  paying  interest  on  a  forty- 
pound  note,  which,  like  a  Hydra-head,  was 
always  forthcoming  so  soon  as  it  was  de 
molished.  This  disgraceful  business  was 
the  man's  chief  concern  :  for  the  older 
he  grew  the  deeper  and  deeper  he  sank 
into  entanglements,  particularly  after  the 
death  of  the  King.  It  was  never  doubted, 
in  his  day,  but  that  this  was  a  judgment 
on  the  former  Gentleman  Usher  who  af 
fixed  hand  and  seal  to  the  warrant  of  his 
sovereign's  execution.*  His  own  family, 
it  is  said,  as  well  as  the  royalist  Herberts 
and  Newports,  dropped  his  acquaintance  ; 
and  who  knows  whether  Mrs.  Grace  Hewet 
was  faithful  ?  At  his  favorite  Chelsea,  in 
the  April  of  1655,  and  in  about  the  seventy- 

*  There  was  afterwards,  in  France,  a  Gentleman  of  the 
Bedchamber  who  had  other  notions.  "Gratitude,"  said 
Thierry  to  his  executioner  in  the  court-yard  of  the  Ab- 
baye — "  gratitude  has  no  opinions.  I  am  leal  to  my  mas 
ter." 


47 


fourth  year  of  his  age,  Sir  John  Danvers 
ended  his  career  by  more  conventional 
agencies  than  the  rope  and  the  knife, 
which  might  have  befallen  him  in  the 
Stuart  triumph  of  the  morrow.  His  man 
or  fell  an  immediate  forfeit  to  the  crown. 
In  1 66 1,  the  dead  republican  was  at 
tainted,  and  all  of  his  estate  which  was 
unprotected  was  declared  regal  booty. 
The  year  before  his  own  burial  at  Daunt- 
sey  he  laid  there,  "  to  the  great  grief  of 
all  good  men,"  the  body  of  his  elder  son 
Henry,  who  had  just  attained  his  majority. 
The  Earl  of  Danby  had  died,  "  full  of  hon 
ors,  wounds,  and  days,"  in  1643,  while  this 
Henry,  his  nephew,  was  still  a  hopeful 
child  ;  and  on  him  alone  he  had  taken 
pains  to  settle  his  possessions.  But  Henry, 
in  turn,  was  persuaded  to  bequeath  the 
major  part  of  them  to  his  father's  ever- 
gaping  pocket,  the  remainder  reverting 
to  one  of  his  two  surviving  sisters.  The 
third  Lady  Danvers,  who  lived  until  1678, 
had  also  a  son  Charles,*  who  petitioned 
the  crown  for  his  paternal  rights,  but 

*  An  elder  Charles,  son  of  the  Lady  Elizabeth  Danvers, 
was  baptized  in  1632,  and  must  have  died  early. 


died  in  old  age,  with  neither  income  nor 
issue. 

Clarendon  quietly  indicts  Sir  John 
Danvers  as  a  "  proud,  formal,  weak  man," 
such  as  Cromwell  "  employed  and  con 
temned  at  once."  George  Bate  gives 
him  a  harder  character,  saying  that  he 
"  proved  his  brother  to  be  a  delinquent  in 
the  Rump  Parliament,  whereby  he  might 
overthrow  his  will,  and  so  compass  the 
estate  himself.  He  sided  with  the  secta 
rian  party,  was  one  of  the  King's  judges, 
and  lived  afterwards  some  years  in  his 
sin,  without  repentance."  But  the  same 
accuser  adds  the  saving  fact  that  Dr. 
Thomas  Fuller,  like  Aubrey,  was  Sir 
John's  friend,  and,  by  his  desire,  preached 
many  times  at  Chelsea,  "  where,  1  am 
sure,  he  was  instructed  to  repent  of  his 
misguided  and  wicked  consultations  in 
having  to  do  with  the  murther  of  that 
just  man."  One  half  surmises  that  had 
the  preliminaries  of  the  great  struggle 
occurred  in  her  time  Magdalen  Herbert's 
rather  austere  and  advanced  standards 
of  right  would  have  stood  it  out,  despite 
her  traditions,  for  the  Commons  against 


49 

Carolus  Agnus*  But  that  would  have 
been  a  very  different  matter  from  shar 
ing  the  feelings  of  the  crude  advo 
cates  of  revolution  and  regicide.  What 
a  misconception  of  her  spotless  mo 
tives  must  she  have  borne,  had  others 
found  her  in  agreement  with  her  vaga 
bond  lord,  who  treated  politics  as  he 
treated  the  sacrament  of  matrimony, 
purely  as  a  makeshift  and  a  specula 
tion  ! 

He  was  no  raw-head-and-bloody-bones, 
this  Roderigo  -  like  Briton  who  won  the 
approval  of  Lord  Bacon,  and  whom  George 
Wither  thanks  for  "  those  pleasurable  re 
freshments  often  vouchsafed  "  ;  and  whom 
very  different  men,  such  as  George  Her 
bert  and  Walton  f  and  peaceable  Fuller 
loved.  He  was  a  comely  creature  of 


*  Edward  Herbert  sided  eventually  with  the  Parliament, 
which  indemnified  him  for  the  burning  and  sacking  of 
Montgomery  Castle. 

t  The  six  very  innocent,  cheerful,  pious  ten-syllable 
stanzas,  attributed  in  The  Complete  Angler  to  "another 
angler,  Jo.  Davors,  Esq.,"  are  not,  it  is  hardly  neces 
sary  to  add,  from  our  scapegrace's  pen.  He  ceased  to 
be  "  Jo.  Davors,  Esq.,"  when  Walton  was  fourteen  years 
old. 

4 


5° 


some  parts,  a  luckless  worldling  anxious 
to  feather  his  own  nest,  and  driven  by 
timidity  and  the  desire  of  gain  into 
treacheries  against  himself.  His  short, 
thin,  and  "  fayre  bodie,"  common,  as 
George  Herbert  would  have  us  imply, 
to  all  who  bore  his  name,  his  elegance, 
his  hospitality,  and  his  devotedness  to 
his  elderly  wife,  carried  him  off  hand 
somely  in  the  eyes  of  her  jealous  circle. 
His  house  in  Chelsea,  commemorated  now 
by  Danvers  Street,  adjoined  that  which 
had  been  Sir  Thomas  More's,  and  was  pre 
sumably  a  part  of  the  same  estate.  All 
around  it,  and  due  to  its  master's  genuine 
enthusiasm,  lay  the  first  Italian  garden 
planted  in  England ;  and  there,  rolling 
towards  the  Thames,  were  the  long  glow 
ing  flower-beds  and  green  orchard-alleys, 
which  were  also  the  "  horti  deltcice  domt- 
ncs"  recalled  thrice  in  the  music  of  filial 
sorrow.  This  home  of  Magdalen  Dan 
vers  was  pulled  down,  and  built  over,  in 
1716.  Within  its  unfallen  walls,  where 
she  spent  her  serene  married  life,  and 
where  she  died,  she  had  time  to  think, 
nevertheless,  that  she  stood,  towards  even- 


ing,  in  the  ways  of  folly,  and  that  hers 
was  one  of  those  little  incipient  domestic 
tragedies  which  must  always  look  amus 
ing,  even  to  a  friend. 


II 
HENRY   VAUGHAN 

1621-1695 


HENRY   VAUGHAN 

>N  his  own  person,  Henry 
Vaughan  left  no  trace  in 
society.  His  life  seemed 
to  slip  by  like  the  running 
water  on  which  he  was  for 
ever  gazing  and  moralizing,  and  his  mem 
ory  met  early  with  the  fate  which  he 
hardly  foresaw.  Descended  from  the  royal 
chiefs  of  southern  Wales  whom  Tacitus 
mentions,  and  whose  abode,  in  the  day  of 
Roman  domination,  was  in  the  district 
called  Siluria,*  he  called  himself  the  Si- 
lurist  upon  his  title-pages ;  and  he  keeps 
the  distinctive  name  in  the  humblest  of 
epitaphs,  close  by  his  home  in  the  glori 
ous  valley  of  the  Usk  and  the  little  Hond- 
dw,  under  the  shadow  of  Tretower,  the 
ruined  castle  of  his  race,  and  of  Pen-y- 

*  Siluria  comprised  the  shires  of  Monmouth,  Hereford, 
Glamorgan,  Radnor,  and  Brecon. 


Fan  and  his  kindred  peaks.  What  we 
know  of  him  is  a  sort  of  pastoral :  how 
he  was  born,  the  son  of  a  poor  gentleman, 
in  1621,  at  Newton  St.  Bridget,  in  the  old 
house  yet  asleep  on  the  road  between 
Brecon  and  Crickhowel ;  how  he  went 
up  to  Oxford,  Laud's  Oxford,  with  Thom 
as,  his  twin,  as  a  boy  of  sixteen,  to  be  en 
tered  at  Jesus  College  ;*  how  he  took  his 
degree  (just  where  and  when  no  one  can 
discover),  and  came  back,  after  a  London 
revel,  to  be  the  village  physician,  though 
he  was  meant  for  the  law,  in  what  had  be 
come  his  brother's  parish  of  Llansaint- 
fraed ;  to  write  books  full  of  sequestered 
beauty,  to  watch  the  most  tragic  of 
wars,  to  look  into  the  faces  of  love  and 
loss,  and  to  spend  his  thoughtful  age  on 
the  bowery  banks  of  the  river  he  had  al 
ways  known,  his  Isca  parens  floruin,  to 

*  The  Reverend  H.  F.  Lyte,  Vaughan's  enthusiastic 
editor,  best  known  as  the  author  of  Abide  with  Me,  reminds 
us  that  there  was  another  Henry  Vaughan  of  the  same 
college  and  the  same  neighborhood  at  home — a  pleasant 
theological  person  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  poet.  It 
was  probably  he,  and  not  the  Silurist,  who  devoted  some 
verses  to  Charles  the  First  in  the  book  called  Eucharis- 
tica  Oxoniensis,  1641. 


57 


which  he  consecrated  many  a  sweet  Eng 
lish  line.  And  the  ripple  of  the  not 
unthankful  Usk  was  "distinctly  audible 
over  its  pebbles/'  as  was  the  Tweed  to  the 
failing  sense  of  Sir  Walter,  in  the  room 
where  Henry  Vaughan  drew  his  last 
breath,  on  St.  George's  day,  April  23, 1695. 
He  died  exactly  seventy-nine  years  after 
Shakespeare,  exactly  one  hundred  and 
fifty-five  years  before  Wordsworth. 

Circumstances  had  their  way  with  him, 
as  with  most  poets.  He  knew  the  touch 
of  disappointment  and  renunciation,  not 
only  in  life,  but  in  his  civic  hopes  and  in 
his  art.  He  broke  his  career  in  twain, 
and  began  over,  before  he  had  passed 
thirty;  and  he  showed  great  aesthetic 
discretion,  as  well  as  disinterestedness,  in 
replacing  his  graceful  early  verses  by  the 
deep  dedications  of  his  prime.  Religious 
faith  and  meditation  seem  so  much  part 
of  his  innermost  nature,  it  is  a  little  diffi 
cult  to  remember  that  Vaughan  consid 
ered  himself  a  brand  snatched  from  the 
burning,  a  lawless  Cavalier  brought  by 
the  best  of  chances  to  the  quiet  life,  and 
the  feet  of  the  moral  Muse.  He  suffered 


most  of  the  time  between  1643  and  1651 
from  a  sorely  protracted  and  nearly  fatal 
illness;  and  during  its  progress  his  wife 
and  his  dearest  friends  were  taken  from 
him.  Nor  was  the  execution  of  the 
King  a  light  event  to  so  sensitive  a  poet 
and  so  passionate  a  partisan.  Meanwhile 
Vaughan  read  George  Herbert,  and  his 
theory  of  proportional  values  began  to 
change.  It  was  a  season  of  transition 
and  silent  crises,  when  men  bared  their 
breasts  to  great  issues,  and  when  it  was 
easy  for  a  childlike  soul, 

"Weary  of  her  vain  search  below,  above, 
In  the  first  Fair  to  find  the  immortal  Love."* 

Vaughan,  in  his  new  fervor,  did  his  best 
to  suppress  the  numbers  written  in  his 
youth,  thus  clearing  the  field  for  what 
he  afterwards  called  his  "  hagiography  "  ; 
and  a  critic  may  wonder  what  he  found 
in  his  first  tiny  volume  of  1646,  or  in  Olor 
Iscanus,  to  regret  or  cancel.  Every  un- 
baptized  song  is  "  bright  only  in  its  own 

*  These  deep  Augustinian  lines  are  Carew's,  gay  Ca- 
rew's;  and  they  mark  the  highest  religious  expression  of 
their  time- 


innocence,  and  kindles  nothing  but  a 
generous  thought";  and  one  of  them,  at 
least,  has  a  manly  postlude  of  love  and 
resolve  worthy  of  the  free  lyres  of  Love 
lace  and  Montrose.  Vaughan,  unlike 
other  ardent  spirits  of  his  class,  had  noth 
ing  very  gross  to  be  sorry  for;  if  he  was, 
indeed,  one  of  his  own 

"  feverish  souls, 
Sick  with  a  scarf  or  glove," 

he  had  none  but  noble  ravings.  Happi 
ly,  his  very  last  verses,  Thalia  Rediviva, 
breaking  as  it  were  by  accident  a  silence 
of  twenty-three  years,  indorse  with  cheer 
ful  gallantry  the  accents  of  his  youth. 
The  turn  in  his  life  which  brought  him 
lasting  peace,  in  a  world  rocking  between 
the  cant  of  the  Parliament  and  resurgent 
audacity  and  riot,  achieved  for  us  a  body 
of  work  which,  small  as  it  is,  has  rare  in 
terest,  and  an  out-of-door  beauty,  as  of 
the  natural  dusk,  "  breathless  with  adora 
tion,"  which  is  almost  without  parallel. 
Eternity  has  been  known  to  spoil  a  poet 
for  time,  but  not  in  this  instance.  Never 
did  religion  and  art  interchange  a  more 


6o 


fortunate  service,  outside  Italian  stu 
dios.  Once  he  had  shaken  off  secu 
lar  ambitions,  Vaughan's  voice  grew  at 
once  freer  and  more  forceful.  In  him  a 
marked  intellectual  gain  sprang  from  an 
apparently  slight  spiritual  readjustment, 
even  as  it  did,  three  centuries  later,  in 
one  greater  than  he,  John  Henry  New 
man. 

Vaughan's  work  is  thickly  sown  with 
personalities,  but  they  are  so  delicate  and 
involved  that  there  is  little  profit  in  de 
taching  them.  What  record  he  made  at 
the  University  is  not  apparent ;  nor  is  it 
at  all  sure  that  so  independent  and  spec 
ulative  a  mind  applied  itself  gracefully 
to  the  curriculum.  He  was,  in  the  only 
liberal  sense,  a  learned  man,  full  of  life 
long  curiosity  for  the  fruit  of  the  Eden 
Tree.  His  lines  beginning 

"Quite  spent  with  thought  I  left  my  cell" 

show  the  acutest  thirst  for  hidden  knowl 
edge  ;  he  would  "  most  gladly  die,"  if 
death  might  buy  him  intellectual  growth. 
He  looks  forward  to  eternity  as  to  the 
unsealing  and  disclosing  of  mysteries.  He 


6i 


makes    the    soul    sing   joyously    to    the 
body : 

"I  that  here  saw  darkly,  in  a  glass, 

But  mists  and  shadows  pass, 
And  by  their  own  weak  shine  did  search  the  springs 

And  source  of  things, 

Shall,  with  inlighted  rays, 

Pierce  all  their  ways!" 

With  an  imperious  query,  he  encounters 
the  host  of  midnight  stars  : 

"Who  circled  in 
Corruption  with  this  glorious  ring?" 

What  Vaughan  does  know  is  nothing 
to  him  ;  when  he  salutes  the  Bodleian 
from  his  heart,  he  is  thinking  how  little 
honey  he  has  gathered  from  that  vast 
hive,  and  how  little  it  contains,  when 
measured  with  what  there  is  to  learn 
from  living  and  dying.  He  had  small 
respect  for  the  sinister  sciences  among 
which  the  studies  of  his  beloved  brother, 
a  Neo-Platonist,  lay.  Though  he  was  no 
pedant,  he  dearly  loved  to  get  in  a  slap 
against  the  ignorant  whom  we  have  al 
ways  with  us.  At  twenty-five,  he  printed 
a  good  adaptation  of  the  Tenth  of  Juve- 


nal,  and  flourished  his  wit,  in  the  pref 
ace,  at  the  expense  of  some  possible  gen 
tle  reader  of  the  parliamentary  persua 
sion  who  would  "  quarrel  with  antiquitie." 
"These,  indeed,  may  think  that  they 
have  slept  out  so  many  centuries  in  this 
Satire,  and  are  now  awaked  ;  which  had 
it  been  still  Latin,  perhaps  their  nap  had 
been  everlasting !" 

He  was  an  optimist,  proven  through 
much  personal  trial ;  he  had  sympathy 
with  the  lower  animals,  and  preserved  a 
humorous  deference  towards  all  things 
alive,  even  the  leviathan  of  Holy  Writ, 
which  he  affectionately  exalts  into  "the 
shipmen's  fear"  and  "the  comely  spa 
cious  whale"!  Vaughan  adored  his 
friends ;  he  had  a  unique  veneration  for 
childhood  ;  his  adjective  for  the  admi 
rable  and  beautiful,  whether  material 
or  immaterial,  is  "dear";  and  his  mind 
dwelt  with  habitual  fondness  on  what 
Sir  Thomas  Browne  (a  man  after  his 
own  heart)  calls  "  incomprehensibles,  and 
thoughts  of  things  which  thoughts  do 
but  tenderly  touch." 

His  occupation  as  a  resident  physician 


must  have  fostered  his  fine  eye  and  ear 
for  the  green  earth,  and  furnished  him, 
day  by  day,  with  musings  in  sylvan  soli 
tudes,  and  rides  abroad  over  the  fresh 
hill-paths.  The  breath  of  the  mountains 
is  about  his  books.  An  early  riser,  he 
uttered  a  constant  invocation  to  whom 
ever  would  listen,  that 

"  Manna  was  not  good 
After  sun-rising;  far-day  sullies  flowers." 

He  was  hospitable  on  a  limited  income.* 
His  verses  of  invitation  To  his  Retired 
Friend,  which  are  not  without  their 
thrusts  at  passing  events,  have  a  classic 
jollity  fit  to  remind  the  reader  of  Ran 
dolph's  ringing  ode  to  Master  Anthony 
Stafford.  Again  and  again  Vaughan  re 
iterates  the  Socratic  and  Horatian  song 
of  content :  that  he  has  enough  lands 

*  Vaughan  apparently  enjoyed  that  privilege  of  genius, 
acquaintance  with  a  London  garret,  if  we  may  take  au- 
tobiographically  the  fine  brag  worthy  of  the  tribe  of  Henri 
Miirger: 

"  I  scorn  your  land, 
So  far  it  lies  below  me  ;  here  I  see 
How  all  the  sacred  stars  do  circle  me." 


and  money,  that  there  are  a  thousand 
things  he  does  not  want,  that  he  is 
blessed  in  what  he  has.  All  this  does 
not  prevent  him  from  recording  the  phe 
nomenal  ebb-tides  of  his  purse,  and  from 
whimsically  synthesizing  on  "  the  thread 
bare,  goldless  genealogie  "  of  bards  !  No 
sour  zealot  in  anything,  he  enjoyed  an 
evening  now  and  then  at  the  Globe  Tav 
ern  in  London,  where  he  consumed  his 
sack  with  relish,  that  he  might  be  "  pos 
sessor  of  more  soul,"  and  "after  full  cups 
have  dreams  poetical."  But  he  was  no 
lover  of  the  town.  Country  life  was  his 
joy  and  pride ;  the  only  thing  which 
seemed,  in  his  own  most  vivid  phrase,  to 
"  fill  his  breast  with  home." 

"  Here  something  still  like  Eden  looks  ! 
Honey  in  woods,  juleps  in  brooks." 

A  literary  acquaintance,  one  unrecog 
nized  N.  W.,  congratulates  Vaughan  that 
he  is  able  to  "give  his  Muse  the  swing 
in  an  hereditary  shade."  He  translated 
with  great  gusto  The  Old  Man  of  Verona, 
out  of  Claud ian,  and  Guevara's  Happi 
ness  of  Country  Life ;  and  he  notes  with 


satisfaction  that  Abraham  was  of  his 
rural  mind,  in  "  Mamre's  holy  grove." 
Vaughan  was  an  angler,  need  it  be  add 
ed  ?  Nay,  the  autocrat  of  anglers :  he 
was  a  salmon-catcher. 

With  "the  charity  which  thinketh  no 
evil,"  he  loved  almost  everything,  except 
the  Jesuits,  and  his  ogres  the  Puritans. 
For  Vaughan  knew  where  he  stood,  and 
his  opinion  of  Puritanism  never  varied. 
He  kept  his  snarls  and  satires,  for  the 
most  part,  hedged  within  his  prose,  the 
proper  ground  of  the  animosities.  When 
he  put  on  his  singing-robes,  he  tried  to 
forget,  not  always  with  success,  his 
spites  and  bigotries.  For  his  life,  he 
could  not  help  sidelong  glances,  stings, 
strictures  between  his  teeth,  thistle-down 
hints  cast  abroad  in  the  neatest  of  gene 
ralities  : 

"Who  saint  themselves,  they  are  no  saints!" 

The  introduction  to  his  Mount  of  Olives 
(whose  pages  have  a  soft  billowy  music 
like  Jeremy  Taylor's)  is  nominally  in 
scribed  to  "  the  peaceful,  humble,  and 
pious  reader."  That  functionary  must 
s 


1,6 


have  found  it  a  trial  to  preserve  his 
peaceful  and  pious  abstraction,  while  the 
peaceful  and  pious  author  proceeded  to 
flout  the  existing  government,  in  a  tow 
ering  rage,  and  in  very  elegant  caustic 
English.  Vaughan  was  none  too  godly 
to  be  a  thorough  hater.  He  was  genially 
disposed  to  the  pretensions  of  every  hu 
man  creature;  he  refused  to  consider  his 
ancestry  and  nurture  by  themselves,  as 
any  guarantee  of  the  justice  of  his  views 
or  of  his  superior  insight  into  affairs. 
Yet  in  spite  of  his  enforced  Quaker  atti 
tude  during  the  clash  of  arms,  he  nursed 
in  that  gentle  bosom  the  heartiest  loath 
ing  of  democracy,  and  shared  the  tastes 
of  a  certain  clerk  of  the  Temple  "who 
never  could  be  brought  to  write  Oliver 
with  a  great  O."  It  is  fortunate  that 
he  did  not  spoil  himself,  as  Wither  did, 
upon  the  wheels  of  party,  for  politics 
were  his  most  vehement  concern.  Had 
he  been  richer,  as  he  tells  us  in  a  playful 
passage,  nothing  on  earth  would  have 
kept  him  from  meddling  with  national 
issues. 
The  poets,  save  the  greatest,  Milton, 


his  friend  Andrew  Marvell,  and  Wither, 
rallied  in  a  bright  group  under  the  royal 
standard.  Those  among  them  who  did 
not  fight  were  commonly  supposed,  as 
was  Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  to  re 
deem  their  reputation  by  dying  of  grief 
at  the  overthrow  of  the  King.  Yet 
Vaughan  did  not  fight,  and  Vaughan  did 
not  die  of  grief.  It  is  so  sure  that  he 
suffered  some  privation,  and  it  may  be 
imprisonment,  for  his  allegiance,  that 
shrewd  guessers,  before  now,  have 
equipped  him  and  placed  him  in  the 
ranks  of  the  losing  cause,  where  he  might 
have  had  choice  company.  His  generous 
erratic  brother  (a  writer  of  some  note,  an 
alchemist,  an  Orientalist,  a  Rosicrucian, 
who  was  ejected  from  his  vicarage  in 
1654,  and  died  either  of  the  plague,  or  of 
inhaling  the  fumes  of  a  caldron,  at  Al- 
bury,  in  1665,  while  the  court  was  at  Ox 
ford)*  had  been  a  recruit,  and  a  brave 
one.  But  Henry  Vaughan  explicitly  tells 

*  The  King  lodged  at  Christchurch,  the  Queen  and 
my  Lady  Castlemaine  (together,  alas  !)  at  Merton,  amid 
endless  hawking,  tennis,  boating,  basset,  and  general  rev 
elry. 


us,  in  his  Ad  Posteros,  and  in  a  prayer  in 
the  second  part  of  Silex  Scintillans,  that 
he  had  no  personal  share  in  the  constitu 
tional  struggle,  that  he  shed  no  blood. 
Again  he  cries,  in  a  third  lyric, 

"  O  accept 

Of  his  vowed  heart,  whom  Thou  hast  kept 
From  bloody  men  !" 

This  painstaking  record  of  a  fact  by  one 
so  loyal  as  he  goes  far  to  prcw.,  co  an 
inductive  mind  not  thoroughly  familiar 
with  his  circumstances,  that  he  considered 
war  the  worst  of  current  evils,  and  was 
willing,  for  this  first  principle  of  his  phi 
losophy,  to  lay  himself  open  to  the  charge, 
not  indeed  of  cowardice  (was  he  not  a 
Vaughan  ?),  but  of  lack  of  appreciation 
for  the  one  romantic  opportunity  of  his 
life.  His  withdrawal  from  the  turmoil 
which  so  became  his  colleagues  may  seem 
to  harmonize  with  his  known  moral 
courage  and  right  sentiment ;  and  fancy 
is  ready  to  fasten  on  him  the  sad  neu 
trality,  and  the  passionate  "  ingemina- 
tion  "  for  "peace,  peace,"  which  "took 
his  sleep  from  him,  and  would  shortly 
break  his  heart,"  such  as  Clarendon  tells 


69 


us  of  in  his  beautiful  passage  touching 
the  young  Lord  Falkland.  But  it  is 
greatly  to  be  feared  that  Vaughan,  despite 
all  the  abstract  reasoning  which  arrays 
itself  against  so  babyish  and  barbarous  a 
thing  as  a  battle,  would  have  swung  him 
self  into  a  saddle  as  readily  as  any,  had 
not  "  God's  finger  touched  him."  A 
comparison  of  dates  will  show  that  he 
was  bedridden,  while  his  hot  heart  was 
afield  with  the  shouting  gentlemen  whom 
Mr.  Browning  heard  in  a  vision  : 

"King  Charles!  and  who'll  do  him  tight,  now? 
King  Charles  !  and  who's  ripe  for  fight,  now  ? 
Give  a  rouse  :  here's  in  Hell's  despite  now, 
King  Charles!" 

This  is  the  secret  of  Vaughan's  blood- 
guiltlessness.  Of  course  he  thanked 
Heaven,  after,  that  he  was  kept  clean  of 
carnage;  he  would  have  thanked  Heaven 
for  anything  that  happened  to  him.  It 
was  providential  that  we  of  posterity  lost 
a  soldier  in  the  Silurist,  and  gained  a 
poet.  As  the  great  confusion  cleared,  his 
spirit  cleared  too,  and  the  Vaughan  we 
knqw, 

"Delicious,  lusty,  amiable,  fair," 


comes  in,  like  a  protesting  angel,  with 
the  Commonwealth.  Perhaps  he  lived 
long  enough  to  sum  up  the  vanity  of 
statecraft  and  the  instability  of  public 
choice,  driven  from  tyranny  to  license, 
from  absolute  monarchy  to  absolute  an 
archy  ;  and  to  turn  once  more  to  his 
"loud  brook's  incessant  fall"  as  an  ob 
ject  much  worthier  of  a  rational  man's 
regard.  Born  while  James  I.  was  vain- 
gloriously  reigning,  Henry  Vaughan  sur 
vived  the  Civil  War,  the  two  Protector 
ates,  the  orgies  of  the  Restoration  (which 
he  did  not  fail  to  satirize),  and  the  Revo 
lution  of  "  Meenie  the  daughter,"  as  the 
old  Scots  song  slyly  calls  her.  He  had 
seen  the  Stuarts  in  and  out,  in  and  out 
again,  and  his  seventy -four  years,  on 
lookers  at  a  tragedy,  were  not  forced  to 
sit  through  the  dull  Georgian  farce  which 
began  almost  as  soon  as  his  grave  was 
green. 

Moreover,  he  was  thoroughly  out  of 
touch  with  his  surroundings.  While  all 
the  world  was  either  devil-may-care  or 
Calvin-colored,  he  had  for  his  character 
istic  a  rapt,  inexhaustible  joy,  buoying 


him  up  and  sweeping  him  away.  He 
might  well  have  said,  like  Dr.  Henry 
More,  his  twin's  rival  and  challenger  in 
metaphysics,  that  he  was  "  most  of  his 
time  mad  with  pleasure."  While 

"every  burgess  foots' 
The  mortal  pavement  in  eternal  boots," 

Vaughan  lay  indolently  along  a  bank, 
like  a  shepherd  swain,  pondering  upon 
the  brood  of  "green-heads"  who  denied 
miracles  to  have  been  or  to  be,  and  wish 
ing  the  noisy  passengers  on  the  highways 
of  life  could  be  taught  the  value  of 

"  A  sweet  self-privacy  in  a  right  soul." 

His  mind  turned  to  paradoxes  and  in 
verted  meanings,  and  the  analysis  of  his 
own  tenacious  dreams,  in  an  England  of 
pikes  and  bludgeons  and  hock-carts  and 
wassail  -  cakes.  "A  proud,  humoursome 
person,"  Anthony  a  Wood  called  him. 
He  was  something  of  a  fatalist,  inasmuch 
as  he  followed  his  lonely  and  straight 
path,  away  from  crowds,  and  felt  eager 
for  nothing  but  what  fell  into  his  open 
hands.  He  strove  little,  being  convinced 


that  temporal  advantage  is  too  often 
an  eternal  handicap.  "  Who  breaks  his 
glass  to  take  more  light,"  he  reminds  us, 
"  makes  way  for  storms  unto  his  rest." 
This  passive  quality  belongs  to  happy 
men,  and  Vaughan  was  a  very  happy 
man,  thanks  to  the  faith  and  will  which 
made  him  so,  although  he  had  known  ca 
lamity,  and  had  failed  in  much.  Through 
out  his  pages  one  can  trace  the  affect 
ing  struggle  between  things  desired  and 
things  forborne.  It  is  only  a  brave  phi 
losopher  who  can  afford  to  pen  a  stanza 
intimate  as  this  : 

"  O  Thou  who  didst  deny  to  me  , 

The  world's  adored  felicity  ! 
Keep  still  my  weak  eyes  from  the  shine 
Of  those  gay  things  which  are  not  Thine." 

He  had  better  possessions  than  glory  un 
der  his  hand  in  the  health  and  peace  of 
his  middle  age  and  in  his  cheerful  home. 
He  was  twice  married,  arid  must  have 
lost  his  first  wife,  nameless  to  us,  but  most 
tenderly  mourned,  in  his  twenty-ninth  or 
thirtieth  year.  She  seems  to  have  been 
the  mother  of  five  of  his  six  children. 
Vaughan  was  rich  in  friends.  He  had 


known  Davenant  and  Cartwright,  but  it  is 
quite  characteristic  of  him  that  the  two 
great  authors  to  whom  he  was  especially 
attached  were  Jonson  and  John  Fletcher, 
both  only  a  memory  at  the  time  of  his 
first  going  to  London.  Of  Randolph, 
Jonson's  strong  "  son,"  who  so  beggared 
English  literature  by  dying  young  in 
1634,  Vaughan  sweetly  says  somewhere 
that  he  will  hereafter 

"  Look  for  Randolph  in  those  holy  meads." 

Mention  of  his  actual  fellow- workers  is 
very  infrequent,  nor  does  he  mention  the 
Shakespeare  who  had  "  dwelt  on  earth 
unguessed  at,"  and  who  is  believed  to 
have  visited  the  estates  of  the  Vaughans 
at  Scethrog,  and  to  have  picked  up  the 
name  of  his  merry  fellow  Puck  from 
goblin  traditions  of  the  neighborhood. 
Vaughan  followed  his  leisure  and  his 
preference  in  translating  divers  works 
of  meditation,  biography,  and  medicine, 
pleasing  himself,  like  Queen  Bess,  with 
naturalizing  bits  of  Boethius,  and  much 
from  Plutarch,  Ausonius,  Severinus,  and 
Claudian.  He  did  some  passages  from 


74 

Ovid,  but  he  must  have  felt  sharply  the 
violence  done  to  the  lyric  essence  in 
passing  it  ever  so  gently  from  language 
to  language,  for  he  lingered  over  Adrian's 
darling  Antmula  vagula  blandula,  only 
to  leave  it  alone,  and  to  write  of  it  as  the 
saddest  poetry  that  ever  he  met  with. 

Not  the  least  of  Henry  Vaughan's 
blessings  was  his  warm  friendship  with 
"the  matchless  Orinda."*  This  delight 
ful  Catherine  Fowler  married,  in  1647, 
a  stanch  royalist,  Mr.  James  Philips  of 
Cardigan  Priory,  and  as  his  bride,  be 
came  what,  in  the  Welsh  solitudes,  was 
considered  "  neighbor  "  to  Vaughan,  her 
home  being  distant  from  his  just  fifty 
miles  as  the  crow  flies.  She  had  been, 
in  her  infancy,  a  prodigy  of  Biblical  quo 
tation,  like  Evelyn's  little  Richard,  and 
grew  up  to  be  such  another  precieuse  as 
Madame  la  Comtesse  de  Lafayette,  nee 

*  Orinda's  own  verses,  scattered  in  manuscript  among 
her  friends,  were  collected  and  printed  without  her  knowl 
edge,  and  much  against  her  desire,  in  1663  :  a  piece  of 
treachery  which  threw  her  into  a  severe  indisposition. 
She  could  therefore  condole  more  than  enough  with 
Henry  Vaughan.  Friends  were  officious  creatures  in 
those  days. 


Lavergne  ;  but  we  know  that  she  was  the 
cleverest  and  comeliest  of  good  women, 
and  Vaughan's  association  with  her  must 
have  been  a  perpetual  sunshine  to  him 
and  his.  She  prefixed,  after  the  fashion 
of  the  day,  some  commendatory  verses 
to  his  published  •  work.  They  are  not 
only  pretty,  but  they  furnish  a  bit  of  ade 
quate  criticism.  The  secular  Muse  of 
the  Silurist  is,  according  to  Orinda, 

"Truth  clothed  in  wit;  and  Love  in  innocence," 

and  has,  for  her  birthright,  seriousness 
and  a  "charming  rigour."  The  last  two 
words  might  stand  for  him  in  the  fast- 
coming  day  when  nobody  will  have  time 
to  discuss  old  poets  in  anything  but  tech 
nical  terms  and  epigrams.  Orinda,  with 
her  accurate  judgment,  should  have  had 
a  chance  to  talk  to  Mr.  Thomas  Camp 
bell,  who  adorned  his  Specimens  with  the 
one  official  and  truly  prepositional  phrase 
that  "  Vaughan  was  one  of  the  harshest 
of  writers,  even  of  the  inferior  order  of 
the  school  of  conceit !"  * 

*  This,  to  say  the  least,  was  not  "  pretty  "  of  Campbell, 
who  thought  so  well  of  the  "world's  grey  fathers"  con- 


While  Henry  Vaughan  was  preparing 
for  publication  the  first  half  of  Silex 
Scintillans  as  the  token  of  his  arrested 
and  uplifted  youth,  Rev.  Mr.  Thomas 
Vaughan,  backed  by  a  few  other  san 
guine  Oxonians,  and  disregardful  of  his 
twin's  exaggerated  remorse  for  the  fruits 
of  his  profaner  years,  brought  out  the 
"  formerly  written  and  newly  named  " 
Olor  Iscamts,  over  the  author's  head,  in 
1650,  and  gave  to  it  a  motto  from  the 
Georgics.  The  preface  is  in  Eugenius 
Philalethes'  own  gallant  style,  and  offers 
a  haughty  commendation  to  "  beauty  from 
the  light  retired."  Perhaps  Vaughan's 
earliest  and  most  partial  editor  felt,  like 
Thoreau  on  a  certain  occasion,  that  it 
were  well  to  make  an  extreme  statement, 
if  only  so  he  might  make  an  emphatic 
one.  He  chose  to  supplicate  the  public 
of  the  Protectorate  in  this  wise  :  "  It  was 
the  glorious  Maro  that  referred  his  lega 
cies  to  the  fire,  and  though  princes  are 
seldom  executors,  yet  there  came  a  Csesar 
to  his  testament,  as  if  the  act  of  a  poet 

gregated  to  gaze  at  Vaughan's  Rainbow  that  he  conveyed 
them  bodily  into  the  foreground  of  his  own. 


could  not  be  repealed  but  by  a  king.  I 
am  not,  reader,  Augustus  Vindex  :  here  is 
no  royal  rescue,  but  here  is  a  Muse  that 
deserves  it.  The  author  had  long  ago 
condemned  these  poems  to  obscurity  and 
the  consumptition  of  that  further  fate 
which  attends  it.  This  censure  gave 
them  a  gust  of  death,  and  they  have 
partly  known  that  oblivion  which  our 
best  labors  must  come  to  at  last.  I  pre 
sent  thee,  then,  not  only  with  a  book,  but 
with  a  prey,  and,  in  this  kind,  the  first 
recoveries  from  corruption.  Here  is  a 
flame  hath  been  some  time  extinguished, 
thoughts  that  have  been  lost  and  forgot, 
but  now  they  break  out  again  like  the 
Platonic  reminiscency.  I  have  not  the 
author's  approbation  to  the  fact,  but  I 
have  law  on  my  side,  though  never  a 
sword  :  I  hold  it  no  man's  prerogative 
to  fire  his  own  house.  Thou  seest  how 
saucy  I  am  grown,  and  if  thou  dost  ex 
pect  I  should  commend  what  is  published, 
I  must  tell  thee  I  cry  no  Seville  oranges ; 
I  will  not  say  '  Here  is  fine,'  or  '  cheap  ' : 
that  were  an  injury  to  the  verse  itself, 
and  to  the  effect  it  can  produce.  Read 


on ;  and  thou  wilt  find  thy  spirit  en 
gaged,  not  by  the  deserts  of  what  we  call 
tolerable,  but  by  the  commands  of  a  pen 
that  is  above  it."  All  this  is  uncritical, 
but  useful  and  proper  on  the  part  of  the 
clerical  brother,  who  writes  very  much  as 
Lord  Edward  Herbert  might  be  supposed 
to  write  for  George  under  like  conditions; 
for  he  knew,  according  to  an  ancient  ad 
age,  that  there  is  great  folly  in  pointing 
out  the  shortcomings  of  a  work  of  art  to 
eyes  uneducated  to  its  beauties.  It  was 
just  as  well  to  insist  disproportionately 
upon  the  principle  at  stake,  that  Henry 
Vaughan's  least  book  was  unique  and 
precious.  He  was  not,  like  the' majority 
of  the  happy  lyrists  of  his  time,  a  writer 
by  accident ;  he  was  strictly  a  man  of 
letters,  and  his  sign-manual  is  large  and 
plain  upon  everything  which  bears  his 
name.  He  indites  like  a  Roman,  with 
evenness  and  without  a  superfluous  syl 
lable.  One  cannot  italicize  him  ;  every 
word  is  a  congested  force,  packed  to 
bursting  with  meaning  and  insistence; 
the  utterance  of  a  man  who  has  been 
thinking  all  his  life  upon  his  own  chosen 


79 


subjects,  and  who  unerringly  despatches 
a  language  about  its  business,  as  if  he 
had  just  created  it.  Like  Andrew  Mar- 
veil's  excellent  father, "  he  never  broached 
what  he  had  never  brewed."  It  follows 
that  his  work,  to  which  second  editions 
were  wellnigh  unknown,  shows  scarcely 
any  variation  from  itself.  It  carries  with 
it  a  testimony  that,  such  as  it  stands,  it  is 
the  very  best  its  author  can  do.  Its  faults 
are  not  slips ;  they  are  quite  as  radical 
and  congenital  as  its  virtues.  Vaughan 
(to  transfer  a  fine  phrase  of  Mr.  W.  T. 
Arnold)  is  "enamoured  of  perfection,"  but 
he  is  fully  so  before  he  makes  up  his 
mind  to  write,  and  from  the  first  every 
stroke  of  his  pen  is  fatal.  It  transfixes 
a  noun  or  a  verb,  pins  it  to  the  page,  and 
challenges  a  reformer  to  move  or  replace 
it.  His  modest  Muse  is  as  sure  as  Shake 
speare,  as  nice  as  Pope ;  she  is  incapable 
of  scruples  and  apprehensions,  once  she 
has  spoken.  What  Vaughan  says  of  Cart- 
wright  may  well  be  applied  to  his  own 
•deliberate  grace  of  diction  : 

"Thou  thy  thoughts  hast  drest  in  such  a  strain 
As  doth  not  only  speak,  but  rule  and  reign." 


So 


His  verses  have  the  tone  of  a  Vandyck 
portrait,  with  all  its  firm  pensive  elegance 
and  lack  of  shadow. 

Vaughan  has  very  little  quaintness,  as 
we  now  understand  that  word,  and  none 
of  the  cloudiness  and  incorrigible  gro- 
tesqueness  which  dominated  his  Alex 
andrian  day.  He  has  great  temperance  ; 
he  keeps  his  eye  upon  the  end,  and 
scarcely  falls  at  all  into  "the  fond  adul 
teries  of  art,"  inversions,  unscholarly  com 
pound  words,  or  hard-driven  metaphors. 
If  he  be  difficult  to  follow,  it  is  only  be 
cause  he  lives,  as  it  were,  in  highly  oxy 
genated  air  ;  he  is  remote  and  peculiar, 
but  not  eccentric.  His  conceits  are  not 
monstrous  ;  the  worst  of  them  proclaims: 

"  Some  love  a  rose 
In  hand,  some  in  the  skin  ; 

But,  cross  to  those, 
T  would  have  mine  within  "  ; 

which  will  bear  a  comparison  with  Ca- 
rew's  hatched  cherubim,  or  with  that 
very  provincialism  of  Herbert's  which 
describes  a  rainbow  as  the  lace  of  Peace's 
coat !  Those  of  Vaughan's  figures  not 
drawn  from  the  open  air,  where  he  was 


8i 


happiest,  are,  indeed,  too  bold  and  too 
many,  and  they  come  from  strange  cor 
ners :  from  finance,  medicine,  mills,  the 
nursery,  and  the  mechanism  of  watches 
and  clocks.  In  no  one  instance,  however, 
does  he  start  wrong,  like  the  great  in- 
fluencer,  Donne,  in  The  Valediction,  and 
finish  by  turning  such  impediments  as 
"stiff  twin -compasses"  into  images  of 
memorable  beauty.  The  Encyclopedia 
Britannica,  like  Campbell,  finds  Vaughan 
"  untunable,"  and  so  he  is  very  often. 
But  poets  may  not  always  succeed  in 
metaphysics  and  in  music  too.  The  lute 
which  has  the  clearest  and  most  enticing 
twang  under  the  laurel  boughs  is  Her- 
rick's,  and  not  Donne's ;  Mr.  Swinburne's, 
and  not  Mr.  Browning's.  It  is  to  be  ob 
served  that  when  Vaughan  lets  go  of  his 
regrets,  his  advice,  and  his  growls  over 
the  bad  times,  he  falls  into  instant  melo 
dy,  as  if  in  that,  and  not  in  a  rough  im- 
pressiveness,  were  his  real  strength.  His 
blessing  for  the  river  Usk  flows  sweetly 
as  the  tide  it  hangs  upon  : 

"  Garlands,  and  songs,  and  roundelays, 
And  dewy  nights,  and  sunshine  days, 
6 


82 


The  turtle's  voice,  joy  without  fear, 
Dwell  on  thy  bosom  all  the  year! 
To  thee  the  wind  from  far  shall  bring 
The  odors  of  the  scattered  spring, 
And,  loaden  with  the  ric^i  arrear, 
Spend  it  in  spicy  whispers  here." 

Vaughan  played  habitually  with  his 
pauses,  and  unconsciously  threw  the 
metrical  stress  on  syllables  and  words 
least  able  to  bear  it ;  but  no  sensitive  ear 
can  be  otherwise  than  pleased  at  the 
broken  sequence  of  such  lines  as 

"  these  birds  of  light  make  a  land  glad 
Chirping  their  solemn  matins  on  a  tree," 

and  the  hesitant  symbolism  of 

"As  if  his  liquid  loose  retinue  stayed 
Lingering,  and  were  of  this  steep  place  afraid." 

The  word  "  perspective,"  with  the  accent 
upon  the  first  syllable,  was  a  favorite 
with  him ;  and  Wordsworth  approved  of 
that  usage  enough  to  employ  it  in  the 
majestic  opening  of  the  sonnet  on  King's 
College  Chapel.*  In  short,  if  Vaughan 

*  Per'-spective  was,  of  course,  the  general  pronuncia 
tion  from  Shakespeare  to  Dr.  Johnson,  and  is  used  with 


be  "  untunable,"  it  is  because  he  never 
learned  to  distil  vowels  at  the  expense  or 
peril  of  the  message  which  he  believed 
himself  bound  to  deliver,  even  where  hear 
ers  were  next  to  none,  and  which  he  tried 
only  to  make  compact  and  clear.  His 
speech  has  a  deep  and  free  harmony  of 
its  own,  to  those  whom  abruptness  does 
not  repel ;  and  even  critics  who  turn 
from  him  to  the  masters  of  verbal  sound 
may  do  him  the  parting  honor  of  ac 
knowledging  the  nature  of  his  limitation. 


"  A  noble  error,  and  but  seldom  made, 
When  poets  are  by  too  much   force  betrayed  !" 


Vaughan  was  a  born  observer,  and  in 
his  poetry  may  be  found  the  pioneer  ex 
pression  of  the  nineteenth-century  feel 
ing  for  landscape.  His  canvas  is  not  of 
ten  large  ;  he  had  an  indifference  towards 
the  exquisite  presence  of  autumn,  and  an 
inland  ignorance  of  the  sea.  But  he 


great  beauty  in  Dryden's  Ode  to  the  Memory  of  Mrs. 
Anne  Killigreiv.  But  it  is  a  characteristic  word  with 
Vaughan,  and  it  was  from  Vaughan  that  Wordsworth 
took  it. 


84 


could  portray  depth  and  distance  at  a 
stroke,  as  in  the  buoyant  lines : 

"  It  was  high  spring,  and  all  the  way 
Primrosed,  and  hung  with  shade," 

which  etches  for  you  the  whole  winding 
lane,  roofed  and  floored  with  beauty ;  he 
carries  a  reader  over  half  a  continent  in 
his 

"Paths  that  are  hidden  from  the  vulture's  eyes," 

and  suspends  him  above  man's  planet 
altogether  with  his  audacious  eagle,  to 
whom  "whole  seas  are  narrow  specta 
cles,"  and  who 

"in  the  clear  height  and  upmost  air 
Doth  face  the  sun,  and  his  dispersed  hair  !'' 

Besides  this  large  vision,  Vaughan  had 
uncommon  knowledge  how  to  employ 
detail,  during  the  prolonged  literary  in 
terval  when  it  was  wholly  out  of  fashion. 
It  has  been  the  lot  of  the  little  rhyme 
sters  of  all  periods  to  deal  with  the  open 
air  in  a  general  way,  and  to  embellish 
their  pages  with  birds  and  boughs ;  but 
it  takes  a  true  modern  poet,  under  the  in- 


85 


fluence  of  the  Romantic  revival,  to  sum 
up  perfectly  the  ravages  of  wind  and 
frost : 

"Where  is  the  pride  of  summer,  the  green  prime, 
The  many,  many  leaves  all  twinkling?— Three 
On  the  mossed  elm ;  three  on  the  naked  lime 
Trembling ;  and  one  upon  the  old  oak  tree  "  ; 

and  it  takes  another  to  give  the  only 
faithful  and  ideal  report  of  a  warbling 
which  every  schoolboy  of  the  race  had 
heard  before  him  : 

"That's  the  wise  thrush:  he  sings  each  song  twice 

over, 

Lest  you  should  think  he  never  could  recapture 
The  first  fine  careless  rapture." 

That  Vaughan's  pages  should  furnish  this 
patient  specification  is  remarkable  in  a 
man  whose  mind  was  set  upon  things  in 
visible.  His  gaze  is  upon  the  inaccessible 
ether,  but  he  seems  to  detect  everything 
between  himself  and  heaven.  He  sighs 
over  the  inattentive  rustic,  whom,  per 
haps,  he  catches  scowling  by  the  pasture- 
bars  of  the  wild  Welsh  downs : 

"  O  that  he  would  hear 
The  world  read  to  him  !" 


Whatever  is  in  that  pleasant  world  he 
himself  hears  and  sees;  and  his  inter 
rupted  chronicle  is  always  terse,  graphic, 
straight  from  life.  He  has  the  inevita 
ble  phrase  for  every  phenomenon,  a  lit 
tle  low -comedy  phrase,  sometimes,  such 
as  Shakespeare  and  Carew  had  used  be 
fore  him  : 

"Deep  snow 
Candies  our  country's  woody  brow." 

It  seems  never  to  have  entered  the 
primitive  mind  of  Vaughan  to  love,  or 
serve,  art  and  nature  for  themselves.  His 
cue  was  to  walk  abroad  circumspectly 
and  with  incessant  reverence,  because  in 
all  things  he  found  God.  He  marks,  at 
every  few  rods  in  the  thickets,  "those 
low  violets  of  Thine,"  and  the  "  breath 
ing  sacrifice"  of  earth  -  odors  which  the 
"  parched  and  thirsty  isle "  gratefully 
sends  back  after  a  shower.*  His  prayer 

*  Vaughan  had  a  relish  for  damp  weather,  the  thing 
which  makes  the  loveliness  of  the  British  isles,  and  which 
the  ungrateful  islanders  are  prone  to  revile.  He  never 
passes  a  sheet  of  water  without  looking  upward  for  the 
forming  cloud  : 

"That  drowsy  lake 
From  her  faint  bosom  breathed  thee  !" 


is  that  he  may  not  forget  that  physical 
beauty  is  a  great  symbol,  but  only  a  sym 
bol  ;  a  "  hid  ascent  "  through  "  masks  and 
shadows  "  to  the  divine  ;  or,  as  Mr.  Lowell 
said  in  one  of  his  last  poems, 

"a  tent 
Pitched  for  an  Inmate  far  more  excellent." 

A  humanist  of  the  school  of  Assisi, 
Vaughan  was  full  of  out-of-door  meek 
nesses  and  pieties,  nowhere  sweeter  in 
their  expression  than  in  this  all-embrac 
ing  valedictory : 

"O  knowing,  glorious  Spirit!  when 
Thou  shalt  restore  trees,  beasts,  and  men, 

Give  him  among  Thy  works  a  place 

Who  in  them  loved  and  sought  Thy  face." 

He  muses  in  the  garden,  at  evenfall : 

"  Man  is  such  a  marigold 
As  shuts,  and  hangs  the  head." 

Clouds,  seasons,  and  the  eternal  stars  are 
his  playfellows  ;  he  apostrophizes  our  sis 
ter  the  rainbow,  and  reminds  her  of  yes 
terday,  when 

"Terah,  Nahor,  Haran,  Abram,  Lot, 
The  youthful  world's  grey  fathers,  in  one  knot," 


lifted  anxious  looks  to  her  new  splendor. 
He  is  familiar  with  the  depression  which 
comes  from  boding  weather,  when 

"a  pilgrim's  eye, 
Far  from  relief, 
Measures  the  melancholy  sky." 

He  has  an  artist's  feeling,  also,  for  the 
wrath  of  the  elements,  which  inevitably 
hurry  him  on  to  the  consummation 

"When  Thou  shall  spend  Thy  sacred  store 

Of  thunders  in  that  heat, 
And  low  as  e'er  they  lay  before 
Thy  six-days  buildings  beat !" 

"  I  saw,"  he  says,  suddenly — 

'•I  saw  Eternity  the  other  night"  ; 

and  he  is  perpetually  seeing  things  al 
most  as  startling  and  as  bright:  the 
"  edges  and  the  bordering  light "  of  lost 
infancy;  the  processional  grandeur  of 
old  books,  which  he  fearlessly  calls 

"The  track  of  fled  souls,  and  their  Milky  Way"; 

and  visions  of  the  Judgment,  when 

"  from  the  right 
The  white  sheep  pass  into  a  whiter  light." 


Here  the  figure  beautifully  forecasts  a  fa 
mous  one  of  Rossetti's.  Light,  indeed, 
is  Vaughan's  distinctive  word,  and  the  fa 
vorite  source  of  his  similes  and  illustra 
tions. 

If  Vaughan's  had  not  been  so  pro 
foundly  moral  a  nature,  he  would  have 
lacked  his  picturesque  sense  of  the  gen 
eral,  the  continuous.  That  shibboleth, 
"a  primrose  by  the  river's  brim,"  is  to 
him  all  the  generations  of  all  the  yellow 
primroses  smiling  there  since  the  Druids' 
day,  and  its  mild  moonlike  ray  reflects 
the  hope  and  fear  and  pathos  of  the  mor 
tal  pilgrimage  that  has  seen  and  saluted 
it,  age  after  age.  Whatever  he  meets 
upon  his  walk  is  drowned  and  dimmed 
in  a  wide  halo  of  association  and  sympa 
thy.  His  unmistakable  accent  marks  the 
opening  of  a  little  sermon  called  The 
Timber  ;  a  sigh  of  pity,  tender  as  a  child's, 
over  the  fallen  and  unlovely  logs  : 

"  Sure,  thou  didst  flourish  once  !  and  many  springs 

Many  bright  mornings,  much  dew,  many  showers, 
Passed  o'er  thy  head  ;  many  light  hearts  and  wings, 
Which  now  are  dead,  lodged  in  thyliving  towers."* 

*  Sometimes  erroneously  printed  "bowers." 


Leigh  Hunt  once  challenged  England 
and  America*  to  produce  anything  ap 
proaching,  for  music  and  feeling,  the 
beauty  of 

"boughs  that  shake  against  the  cold, 
Bare  ruined  choirs,  where  late  the  sweet  birds  sang." 

He  forgot  the  closes  of  these  artless 
lines  of  a  minor  poet ;  or  he  did  not  know 
them. 

Vaughan's  meek  reputation  began  to 
renew  itself  about  1828,  when  four  crit 
ics  eminently  fitted  to  appraise  his 
worth  were  in  their  prime  ;  but,  curiously 
enough,  none  of  these,  not  even  the  best 
of  them,  the  same  Charles  Lamb  who 
said  a  just  and  generous  word  for  Wither, 
had  the  satisfaction  of  rescuing  his  sunk 
en  name.  Lamb's  friend,  the  good  soul 
Bernard  Barton,  seems,  however,  to  have 
known  and  admired  his  Vaughan. 

*  It  was  kind  of  the  ever-kind  Hunt  to  include  America 
in  his  enumeration,  at  a  time  when  the  United  States  were 
supposed  by  his  fellow-countrymen  to  have  no  literature 
at  all  of  their  own.  The  circumstance  that  his  challenge 
appeared  in  the  preface  to  The  Book  of  the  Sonnet,  which 
was  edited  by  Hunt  in  conjunction  with  an  American, 
and  published  at  Boston  in  1868,  may  help  to  account 
for  the  mannerliness  of  the  reference. 


Eight  little  books,  if  we  count  the  two 
parts  of  Silex  Scintillans  as  one,*  enclose 
all  of  the  Silurist's  original  work.  He 
began  to  publish  in  1646,  and  he  practi 
cally  ceased  in  1655,  reappearing  but  in 
1678  with  Thalia  Redivtva,  which  was 

*  In  the  Letters  and  Memorials  of  Archbishop  Trench, 
vol.  ii.,  p.  57,  there  is  a  letter  bearing  upon  this  point 
from  Mr.  Frank  Millson,  dated  1868,  which  deserves  seri 
ous  consideration  from  Vaughan's  forthcoming  editors. 
"I  think,"  he  writes  the  Dean,  "that  your  supposition 
that  the  1655  edition  is  the  same  book  as  the  one  of  1650, 
with  a  new  title-page  and  additions,  can  hardly  be  correct, 
though  I  know  that  Lyte,  the  editor  of  Pickering's  re 
print,  thinks  as  you  do.  The  preface  to  the  1655  edition 
is  dated  September  30,  1654,  and  contains  this  passage  " 
(not  given  in  the  Memorials]  "  which  seems  to  me  to 
refer  to  the  fact  of  a  new  edition.  A  comparison  of  my 
two  copies  shows  that  the  1650  edition  consists  of  half  a 
sheet,  title  and  dedication,  and  no  pages.  The  second 
edition  has  title,  preface,  dedication,  motto,  the  no  pages 
of  the  first  edition,  with  84  pages  of  new  matter,  and  a 
table  of  first  lines.  A  noticeable  thing  in  the  arrange 
ment  is  that  the  sheets  do  not  begin  with  new  printer's 
marks,  as  they  might  be  expected  to  do  if  the  second 
part  were  simply  new  matter  added  to  the  first  volume, 
but  begin  with  A,  the  last  sheet  of  the  former  volume  hav 
ing  ended  with  G.  1  am  sorry  to  trouble  you  with  these 
trifling  details ;  but  as  Vaughan  has  long  been  a  favorite 
author  of  mine,  they  have  an  interest  for  me,  and  if  they 
help  to  show  that  he  was  not  neglected  by  readers  of  his 
own  time,  I  shall  be  glad." 


9-' 


not  issued  under  his  own  supervision.  It 
is  commonly  supposed  that  his  verses 
were  forgotten  up  to  the  date  (1847)  of  the 
faulty  but  timely  Aldine  edition  of  the 
Rev.  H.  F.  Lyte,  thrice  reprinted  and  re 
vised  since  then,  and  until  the  appearance 
of  Dr.  Grosart's  four  inestimable  quartos  ; 
but  Mr.  Carew  Hazlitt  has  been  fortunate 
enough  to  discover  the  advertisement  of 
an  eighteenth-century  reprint  of  Vaughan. 
As  the  results  of  Dr.  Grosart's  patient  ser 
vice  to  our  elder  writers  are  necessarily 
semi -private,  it  may  be  said  with  truth 
that  the  real  Vaughan  is  still  debarred 
from  jthe  general  reader,  who  is,  indeed, 
the  identical  person  least  concerned  about 
that  state  of  affairs.  His  name  is  not  ir 
recoverable  nor  unfamiliar  to  scholars.* 

*  Anthologies  and  cyclopaedias  nowadays,  especially 
since  Dr.  John  Brown  and  Principal  Shairp  drew  atten 
tion  to  the  Silurist  in  their  pages,  are  more  than  likely  to 
admit  him.  It  was  not  so  always.  Winstanley,  sharp  as 
was  his  eye,  let  Vaughan  escape  him  in  his  Lives  of  the 
Poets,  published  in  1687.  He  is  not  in  the  Theatrum 
Poetarum,  nor  in  Johnson's  Lives.  He  is  in  neither  of 
Southey's  collections.  Mr.  Palgrave  allows  him,  in  The 
Golden  Treasury,  but  a  song  and  a  half;  Ellis's  sheaf  of 
excellent  Specimens  of  1811  furnishes  eighteen  lines  of  a 


His  mind,  on  the  whole,  might  pass  for 
the  product  of  yesterday  ;  and  he,  who 
needs  no  glossary,  may  handsomely  cede 
the  honors  of  one  to  Mr.  William  Morris. 
It  is  at  least  certain  that  had  Vaughan 
lately  lifted  up  his  sylvan  voice  out  of 

wedding  blessing  on  the  Best  and  Most  Accomplished 
Couple  apologizing  for  "their  too  much  quaintness  and 
conceit  "  ;  and  in  Willmott's  Sacred  Poets  Vaughan  occu 
pies  four  pages,  as  against  Crashaw's  thirty  -  five,  Her 
bert's  thirty-seven,  and  Wither's  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
two.  But  Vaughan  fares  well  in  Dr.  George  Macdonald's 
England' 's  Antiphon,  and  in  Archbishop  Trench's  House 
hold  Book.  Ward's  English  Poets,  in  the  second  volume, 
has  a  conventional  selection  from  him,  as  has,  at  greater 
length,  Fields'  and  Whipple's  Family  Library  of  Brit 
ish  Poetry.  There  is  a  goodly  list  entered  under  Vaugh- 
an's  name  in  Gilfillan's  Less-Known  British  Poets,  all 
chosen  from  his  devotional  work.  Thirty- seven  religious 
lyrics  again  adorn  the  splendid  Treasury  of  Sacred  Song. 
Vaughan 's  secular  numbers  yet  await  their  proper  bays, 
although  a  limited  edition  of  most  of  them,  containing  a 
bibliography,  was  printed  in  1893  by  J.  R.  Tutin  of  Hull. 
Mr.  Saintsbury,  in  his  Seventeenth  Century  Lyrics,  has 
a  small  and  very  choice  group  of  Vaughan 's  songs,  and 
Professor  Palgrave,  having  to  do  with  him  for  the  third 
time,  gives  him  large  and  cordial  honor  in  the  eleventh 
volume  of  Y  Cymmrodor.  In  Emerson's  Parnassus  he 
appears  but  once.  He  had  his  most  graceful  and  grateful 
American  tribute  when  Mr.  Lowell,  long  ago,  named  him 
in  passing  as  "  dear  Henry  Vaughan,"  in  A  Certain  Con 
descension  in  Foreigners. 


Brecknockshire,  he  would  not  so  readily 
be  accused  of  having  modelled  himself 
unduly  upon  George  Herbert.*  He  has 
gone  into  eclipse  behind  that  gracious 
name. 

Henry  Vaughan  was  a  child  of  thir 
teen  when  Herbert,  a  stranger  to  him, 
died  at  Bemerton,  and  he  read  him  first 
in  the  sick -chamber  to  which  the  five 
years'  distresses  of  his  early  manhood 
confined  him.  The  reading  could  not 
have  been  prior  to  1647,  for  Olor  Is- 
camis,  Vaughan's  second  volume,  was  ly 
ing  ready  for  the  press  that  year,  as  we 
know  from  the  date  of  its  dedication  to 
Lord  Kildare  Digby.  As  no  novice  poet, 
therefore,  he  fell  under  the  spell  of  a  sweet 
and  elect  soul,  who  was  also  a  lover  of 
vanquished  royalty,  a  convert  who  had 
looked  upon  the  vanities  of  the  court  and 
the  city,  a  Welshman  born,  and  not  un- 

*  In  one  of  his  prefaces,  Vaughan  hits  neatly  at  the 
crowd  of  Herbertists:  "These  aim  more  at  verse  than  at 
perfection."  Where  there  are  noble  resemblances,  it  is 
well  to  remember  that  two  sides  have  the  right  to  be  heard. 
Mrs.  Thoreau  used  to  say  :  "  Mr.  Emerson  imitates  Hen 
ry  !"  And  she  was  at  least  as  accurate  as  the  critics  who 
annoyed  her  old  age  by  the  reversed  statement. 


connected  with  Vaughan's  own  ancient 
and  patrician  house.  These  were  slight 
coincidences,  but  they  served  to  strength 
en  a  forming  tie.  The  Silurist  some 
where  thanks  Herbert's  "  holy  ever-living 
lines  "  for  checking  his  blood  ;  and  it  was, 
perhaps,  the  only  service  rendered  of 
which  he  was  conscious.  But  his  endless 
iambics  and  his  vague  allegorical  titles 
are  cast  thoroughly  in  the  manner  of  Her 
bert,  and  he  takes  from  the  same  source 
the  heaped  categorical  epithets,  the  di 
dactic  tone,  and  the  introspectiveness 
which  are  his  most  obvious  failings. 
Vaughan's  intellectual  debt  to  Herbert 
resolves  itself  into  somewhat  less  than 
nothing;  for  in  following  him  with  zeal 
to  the  Missionary  College  of  the  Muses, 
he  lost  rather  than  gained,  and  he  is  al 
together  delightful  and  persuasive  only 
where  he  is  altogether  himself.  Never 
theless,  a  certain  spirit  of  conformity  and 
filial  piety  towards  Herbert  has  betrayed 
Vaughan  into  frequent  and  flagrant  imi 
tations.  It  seems  as  if  these  must  have 
been  voluntary,  and  rooted  in  an  inten 
tion  to  enforce  the  same  truths  in  all  but 


the  same  words ;  for  the  moment  Vaughan 
breaks  into  invective,  or  comes  upon  his 
distinctive  topics,  such  as  childhood,  nat 
ural  beauty  (for  which  Herbert  had  an 
imperfect  sense),  friendship,  early  death, 
spiritual  expectation,  he  is  off  and  away, 
free  of  any  predecessor,  thrilling  and  un 
forgettable.  Comparisons  will  not  be  out  of 
place  here,  for  Vaughan  can  bear,  and  even 
invoke  them.  Dryden  said  in  Jonson's 
praise  thathe  was  "a  learned  plagiary, "and 
nobodydoubts  nowadays  that  Shakespeare 
and  Milton  were  the  bandit  kings  of  their 
time.  There  was,  indeed,  in  English  let 
ters,  up  to  Queen  Anne's  reign,  an  open 
communism  of  ideas  and  idioms  astonish 
ing  to  look  upon  ;  there  is  less  confisca 
tion  at  present,  because,  outside  the  pale 
of  the  sciences,  there  is  less  thinking. 
If  any  one  thing  can  be  closer  to  another, 
for  instance,  than  even  Drummond's  son 
net  on  Sleep  is  to  Sidney's,  it  is  the  dress 
of  Vaughan's  morality  to  that  of  George 
Herbert's.  Mr.  Simcox  is  the  only  critic 
who  has  taken  the  trouble  to  contrast 
them,  and  he  does  so  in  so  random  a 
fashion  as  to  suggest  that  his  scrutiny, 


97 


in  some  cases,  has  been  confined  to  the 
rival  titles.  It  is  certain  that  no  other 
mind,  however  bent  upon  identifications, 
can  find  a  likeness  between  The  Quip  and 
The  Queer,  or  between  The  Tempest  and 
Providence.  Vaughan's  Mutiny,  like  The 
Collar,  ends  in  a  use  of  the  word  "  child," 
after  a  scene  of  strife  ;  and  if  ever  it  were 
meant  to  match  Herbert's  poem,  dis 
tinctly  falls  behind  it,  and  deals,  besides, 
with  a  much  weaker  rebelliousness.  Rules 
and  Lessons  is  so  unmistakably  modelled 
upon  The  Church  Porch  that  it  scarce 
ly  calls  for  comment.  Herbert's  admoni 
tions,  however,  are  continued,  but  no 
where  repeated  ;  and  Vaughan's  succeed 
in  being  poetic,  which  the  others  are  not. 
Beyond  these  replicas,  Vaughan's  struct 
ural  genius  is  in  no  wise  beholden  to  Her 
bert's.  But  numerous  phrases  and  turns 
of  thought  descend  from  the  master  to 
the  disciple,  undergoing  such  subtle  and 
peculiar  changes,  and  given  back,  as 
Coleridge  would  say,  with  such  "usuri 
ous  interest,"  that  it  may  well  be  sub 
mitted  whether,  in  this  casual  list,  every 
borrowing,  save  two,  be  not  a  bettering. 


"A  throbbing  conscience,  spurred  by  remorse, 
Hath  a  strange  force." 

"  My  thoughts  are  all  a  case  of  knives, 
Wounding  my  heart 
With  scattered  smart." 

"  And  trust 
Half  that  we  have 
Unto  an  honest  faithful  grave." 

'Teach  me  Thy  love  to  know, 

That  this  new  light  which  now  I  see 
May  both  the  work  and  workman  show : 
Then  by  a  sunbea'm  I  will  climb  to  Thee!" 

'  I  will  go  searching,  till  I  find  a  sun 

Shall  stay  till  we  have  done, 
A  willing  shiner,  that  will  shine  as  gladly 

As  frost-nipt  suns  look  sadly. 
Then  we  will  sing  and  shine  all  our  own  day, 

And  one  another  pay ; 
His  beams  shall  cheer  my  breast,  and  both  so 

twine 
Till  even  his  beams  sing,  and  my  music  shine." 

(Of  prayer.} 

:t  Heaven  in  ordinary,  man  well-drest, 
The  Milky  Way,  the  bird  of  Paradise." 

"  Then  went  I  to  a  garden,  and  did  spy 

A  gallant  flower, 
The  crown-imperial:  Sure,  said  I, 

Peace  at  the  root  must  dwell." 


99 


VAUGHAN. 


"  A  darting  conscience,  full  of  stabs  and  fears. 


"And  wrap  us  in  imaginary  flights 
Wide  of  a  faithful  grave." 

'That  in  these  masks  and  shadows  I  may  see 

Thy  sacred  way, 
And  by  these  hid  ascents  climb  to  that  day 

Which  breaks  from  Thee 
Who  art  in  all  things,  though  invisibly!" 

"  O  would  I  were  a  bird  or  star 
Fluttering  in  woods,  or  lifted  far 
Above  this  inn 
And  road  of  sin ! 

Then  either  star  or  bird  would  be 
Shining  or  singing  still  to  Thee  ! 


(Of  books.} 
'The  track  of  fled  souls,  and  their  Milky  Way.' 


'  I  walked  the  other  day  to  spend  my  hour 

Into  a  field, 
Where  I  sometime  had  seen  the  soil  to  yield 

A  gallant  flower." 


"  But  groans  arc  quick  and  full  of  wings, 

And  all  their  motions  upward  be, 
And  ever  as  they  mount,  like  larks  they  sing: 
The  note  is  sad,  yet  music  for  a  king." 

"Joys  oft  are  there,  and  griefs  as  oft  as  joys, 

But  griefs  without  a  noise ; 
Yet  speak  they  louder  than  distempered  fears : 
What  is  so  shrill  as  silent  tears  ?" 

"At  first  Thou  gavest  me  milk  and  sweetnesses, 

I  had  my  wish  and  way ; 

My  days  were  strewed  with  flowers  and  happi 
ness  ; 

There  was  no  month  but  May." 

"  Only  a  scarf  or  glove 

Doth  warm  our  hands,  and  make  them  write  of 
Love." 

"I  got  me  flowers  to  strew  Thy  way, 
I  got  me  boughs  off  many  a  tree  ; 
But  Thou  wast  up  by  break  of  day, 
And  brought  Thy  sweets  along  with  Thee." 

"O  come!  for  Thou  dost  know  the  way: 

Or  if  to  me  Thou  wilt  not  move, 
Remove  me  where  I  need  not  say, 
'  Drop  from  above.'  " 


'  Sure  Thou  wilt  joy  by  gaining 
To  fly  home  like  a  laden  bee.' 


me 


A  silent  tear  can  pierce  Thy  throne 
When  loud  joys  want  a  wing ; 

And  sweeter  airs  stream  from  a  groan 
Than  any  arted  string." 


"Follow  the  cry  no  more!     There  is 

An  ancient  way, 

All  strewed  with  flowers  and  happiness, 
And  fresh  as  May!'' 


"feverish  souls 
Sick  with  a  scarf  or  glove." 

"  I'll  get  me  up  before  the  sun, 

I'll  cull  me  boughs  off  many  a  tree  ; 
And  all  alone  full  early  run 

To  gather  flowers  and  welcome  Thee." 

'  Either  disperse  these  mists,  which  blot  and  fill 
My  perspective  still  as  they  pass; 

Or  else  remove  me  hence  unto  that  hill 
Where  I  shall  need  no  glass!" 

'Thy  grave,  to  which  my  thoughts  shall  move 
Like  bees  in  storms  unto  their  hive." 


To  arraign  Vaughan  is  to  vindicate 
him.  In  the  too  liberal  assizes  of  litera 
ture,  an  idea  becomes  the  property  of 
him  who  best  expresses  it.  Herbert's 
odd  and  fresh  metaphors,  his  homing 
bees  and  pricks  of  conscience  and  silent 
tears,  the  adoring  star  and  the  comrade 
bird,  even  his  famous  female  scarf,  go 
over  bodily  to  the  spoiler.  In  many  an 
instance  something  involved  and  diffi 
cult  still  characterizes  Herbert's  diction  ; 
and  it  is  diverting  to  watch  how  the  in 
terfering  hand  sorts  and  settles  it  at  one 
touch,  and  sends  it,  in  Mr.  Matthew  Ar 
nold's  word,  to  the  "  centre."  Vaughan's 
mind,  despite  its  mysticism,  was  full  of  de 
spatch  and  impetuosity.  Like  Herbert, 
he  alludes  to  himself,  more  than  once,  as 
"  fierce  "  ;  and  the  adjective  undoubtedly 
belongs  to  him.  There  is  in  Vaughan, 
at  his  height,  an  imaginative  rush  and 
fire  which  Herbert  never  knew,  a  greater 
clarity  and  conciseness,  a  far  greater  re 
straint,  a  keener  sense  both  of  color  and 
form,  and  so  much  more  deference  for 
what  Mr.  Ruskin  calls  "the  peerage  of 
words,"  that  the  younger  man  could  nev- 


er  have  been  content  to  send  forth  a  line 
which  might  mean  its  opposite,  such  as 
occurs  in  the  fine  stanza  about  glory  in 
the  beautiful  Quip.  It  is  only  on  middle 
ground  that  the  better  poet  and  the  bet 
ter  saint  collide.  Vaughan  never  could 
have  written 

"O  that  I  once  past  changing  were 
Fast  in  Thy  Paradise,  where  no  flower  can  wither!" 

or  the  tranquil  confession  of  faith  : 

"  Whether  I  fly  with  angels,  fall  with  dust, 
Thy  hands  made  both,  and  I  am  there : 
Thy  power  and  love,  my  love  and  trust 
Make  one  place  everywhere!" 

For  his  best  is  not  Herbert's  best,  nor  his 
worst  Herbert's  worst.  It  is  not  Vaughan 
who  reminds  us  that  "  filth  "  lies  under  a 
fair  face.  He  does  the  "  fiercer  "  thing  : 
he  goes  to  the  Pit's  mouth  in  a  trance, 
and  "  hears  them  yell."  Herbert's  no 
blest  and  most  winning  art  still  has  its 
stand  upon  the  altar  steps  of  The  Tem 
ple ;  but  Vaughan  is  always  on  the  roof, 
under  the  stars,  like  a  somnambulist,  or 
actually  above  and  out  of  sight,  "  pin- 


nacled  dim  in  the  intense  inane " ;  ab 
sorbed  in  larger  and  wilder  things,  and 
stretching  the  spirits  of  all  who  try  to 
follow  him.  Herbert  has  had  his  reward 
in  the  world's  lasting  appreciation ;  and 
though  Vaughan  had  a  favorable  opinion 
of  his  own  staying  powers,  nothing  would 
have  grieved  him  less  than  to  step  aside, 
if  the  choice  had  lain  between  him  and 
his  exemplar.  Or  re-risen,  he  would  cry 
loyally  to  him,  as  to  that  other  Herbert, 
the  rector  of  Llangattock  and  his  old 
tutor  :  "  Pars  vertat  patri,  vita  posthuma 
tibi." 

Vaughan,  then,  owed  something  to  Her 
bert,  although  it  was  by  no  means  the 
best  which  Herbert  could  give;  but  he 
himself  is,  what  Herbert  is  not,  an  an 
cestor.  He  leans  forward  to  touch  Cow- 
per  and  Keble ;  and  Mr.  Churton  Collins 
has  taken  the  pains  to  trace  him  in  Ten 
nyson. 

The  angels  who 

"  familiarly  confer 
Beneath  the  oak  and  juniper," 

invoke  an  instant  thought  of  the  Milton 


of  the  Allegro ;  and  the  fragrant  winds 
which  linger  by  Usk,  "  loaden  with  the 
rich  arrear,"  appear  to  be  Milton's,  too. 
His  austere  music  first  sounded  in  the 
public  ear  in  1 645,  one  year  before  Vaughan, 
much  his  junior,  began  to  print.  It  would 
seem  very  unlikely  that  a  Welsh  physi 
cian  should  be  beholden  long  after  to  the 
manuscripts  of  the  Puritan  stripling,  close- 
kept  at  Cambridge  and  Horton ;  but  it 
is  interesting  to  find  the  prototype  of 
Vaughan's  charming  lines  about  Rachel, 

"the  sheep-keeping  Syrian  maid," 

in  the  Epitaph  on  the  Marchioness  of  Win 
chester,  dating  from  1631.*  Vaughan's 
dramatic  Fleet  Street, 

"Where  the  loud  whip  and  coach  scolds  all  the  way," 


*  Mr.  R.  H.  Stoddard  owns  a  copy  of  the  first  edition 
of  Nuremberg's  Meditations,  translated  by  Vaughan  in 
1654,  and  published  the  following  year,  which  has  upon 
the  title-page  an  autographic  "  J.  M."  supposed,  by  every 
evidence,  to  be  Milton's.  If  it  be  so,  the  *busy  Latin  Sec 
retary,  meditating  his  grand  work,  must  have  been,  on 
his  part,  a  reader  and  a  lover  of  the  man  who  was  almost 
his  equal  at  golden  phrases. 


io6 


might  as  well  be  Swift's,  or  Crabbe's  ;  and 
his  salutation  to  the  lark, 

"  And  now,  as  fresh  and  cheerful  as  the  light, 
Thy  little  heart  in  early  hymns  doth  sing," 

is  like  a  quotation  from  some  tender  son 
net  of  Bowles,  or  from  his  admirer,  the 
young  Coleridge  who  instantly  outstepped 
him.  Olor,  Silex,  and  Thalia  establish  un 
expected  relationships  with  genius  the 
most  remote  from  them  and  from  each 
other.  The  animated  melody  of  poor 
Rochester's  best  songs  seems  deflected 
from 

"  If  I  were  dead,  and  in  my  place," 

addressed  to  Amoret,*  in  the  Poems  of 
1646.  The  delicate  simile, 

"  As  some  blind  dial,  when  the  day  is  done, 
Can  tell  us  at  midnight  there  was  a  sun," 

and 

"  But  I  am  sadly  loose  and  stray, 
A  giddy  blast  each  way. 
O  let  me  not  thus  range  : 
Thou  canst  not  change  !" 

*  Congreve  and  Waller  employ  the  same  rather  too  ob 
vious  love-name  for  their  serenaded  divinities. 


io7 


(a  verse  of  a  poem  headed  by  an  extract, 
in  the  Vulgate,  from  the  eighth  chapter 
to  the  Romans),  come  home  with  a  smile 
to  the  lover  of  Clough.  Vaugha'n  was 
that  dangerous  person,  an  original  think 
er  ;  and  the  consequence  is  that  he  com 
promises  a  great  many  authors  who  may 
never  have  heard  of  him.  It  is  admitted 
now  that  we  owe  to  his  prophetic  lyre 
one  of  the  boasts  of  modern  literature. 
Dr.  Grosart  has  handled  so  well  the  ob 
vious  debt  of  Wordsworth  in  The  Inti 
mations  of  Immortality,  and  has  proven 
so  conclusively  that  Vaughan  figured  in 
the  library  at  Rydal  Mount,  that  little 
need  be  said  here  on  that  theme.  In 
Corruption,  Childhood,  Looking  Back,  and 
The  Retreat,  most  markedly  in  the  first, 
lie  the  whole  point  and  pathos  of 

"  Trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 
From  Heaven,  which  is  our  home." 

Few  studies  are  more  fascinating  than 
that  of  the  liquidation,  so  to  speak,  of 
Vaughan's  brief,  tense,  impassioned  mon 
odies  into  "  the  mighty  waters  rolling 
evermore  "  of  the  great  Ode.  It  is  Hoi- 


loS 


inshed's  accidental  honor  that  he  is  lost 
in  Shakespeare,  and  incorporated  with 
him.  So  with  Vaughan :  if  shorn  of  his 
dues,  he  still  remains  illustrious  by  virt 
ue  of  one  signal  service  to  Wordsworth, 
whom,  in  the  main,  he  distinctly  fore 
shadows.  Yet  it  is  no  unpardonable  here 
sy  to  be  jealous  that  the  "  first  sprightly 
runnings  "  of  a  classic  should  not  be  bet 
ter  known,  and  to  prefer  their  touching 
simplicity  to  the  grandly  adult  and  theory- 
burdened  lines  which  everybody  quotes. 
In  the  broad  range  of  English  letters  we 
find  two  persons  whose  normal  mental 
habits  seem  altogether  of  a  piece  with 
Vaughan's :  a  woman  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  a  philosopher  of  the  nine 
teenth.  The  lovely  Petition  for  an  Abso 
lute  Retreat,  by  Anne,  Countess  of  Win- 
chelsea  (whose  genius  was  the  charming 
trouvaille  of  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse),  might 
pass  for  Vaughan's,  in  Vaughan's  best 
manner;  and  so  might 

"  Their  near  camp  my  spirit  knows 
By  signs  gracious  as  rainbows," 

as  indeed  the  whole  of  Emerson's  ever- 
memorable  Forerunners,  itself  a  mate  for 


The  Retreat ;  or  rather,  had  these  been 
anonymous  lyrics  of  Vaughan's  own  day, 
it  would  have  been  impossible  to  persuade 
a  Caroline  critic  that  he  could  not  name 
their  common  author. 

Our  poet  had  a  curious  fashion  of  coin 
ing  verbs  and  adjectives  out  of  nouns,  and 
carried  it  to  such  a  degree  as  to  challenge 
pre-eminence  with  Keats. 

"  O  how  it  bloods 
And  spirits  all  my  earth!" 

is  part  and  parcel  of  the  young  cries  of 
Endymion.  When  Vaughan  has  discov 
ered  something  to  produce  a  fresh  effect, 
he  is  not  the  man  who  will  hesitate  to 
use  it ;  and  this  mannerism  occurs  fre 
quently  :  "  our  grass  straight  russets," 
"angel'd  from  that  sphere,"  "  the  moun- 
tained  wave,"  "  He  heavened  their  walks, 
and  with  his  eyes  made  those  wild  shades 
a  Paradise."  A  little  informality  of  this 
sort  sometimes  justifies  itself,  as  in  the 
couplet  ending  the  grim  and  powerful 
Charnel- House  : 

"  But  should  wild  blood  swell  to  a  lawless  strain, 
One  check  from  thee  shall  channel  it  again  !" 


And  Henry  Vaughan  shares  also  with 
Keats,  writing  three  hundred  years  later, 
a  defect  which  he  had  inherited,  together 
with  many  graces,  directly  from  Ben  Jon- 
son:*  the  fashion  of  crowding  the  sense 
of  his  text  and  the  pauseless  voice  of  his 
reader  from  the  natural  breathing-place 
at  the  end  of  a  line  into  the  beginning  or 
the  middle  of  the  next  line.  More  than 
any  other,  except  Keats  in  his  first  period, 
he  roughens,  without  always  strengthen 
ing,  his  rich  decasyllabics,  by  using  what 
Mr.  Gosse  has  happily  classified  as  the 
"  overflow." 

Though  the  Silurist  had  in  him  the  pos 
sibilities  of  a  great  elegiac  poet,  and  his 
laments  for  his  dead  are  many  and  mem 
orable,  there  is  not  one  sustained  mas 
terpiece  among  them  ;  nothing  to  equal 

*  Vaughan  openly  wears  jewels  which  belong  to  Jonson. 

"Go  seek  thy  peace  in  war: 
Who  falls  for  love  of  God  shall  rise  a  star !" 

wrote  brave  Father  Ben  ;  and  no  Englishman  of  spirit, 
between  1642  and  the  Restoration,  was  likely  to  forget  it. 
The  passage  certainly  clung  to  Vaughan's  mind,  for  he 
assimilated  it  later  in  a  sweet  line  all  for  peace  : 

"  Do  thou  the  works  of  day,  and  rise  a  star." 


or  approach,  for  example,  Cowley's  Ode 
on  the  Death  of  Mr.  William  Hervey,  in 
the  qualities  which  abide,  and  are  visited 
with  the  honors  of  the  class-book  and 
the  library  shelf.  Yet  Vaughan's  elegies 
are  exquisite  and  endearing ;  they  haunt 
one  with  the  conviction  that  they  stop 
short  of  immortality,  not  because  their 
author  had  too  little  skill,  but  because, 
between  his  repressed  speech  and  his  ex 
treme  emotions,  no  art  could  make  out 
to  live.  He  had  a  deep  heart,  such  as 
deep  hearts  will  always  recognize  and 
reverence : 

"And  thy  two  wings  were  grief  and  love." 

In  the  face  of  eternity  he  seems  so  to 
accord  with  the  event  which  all  but  de 
stroys  him,  that  sorrow  inexpressible  be 
comes  suddenly  unexpressed,  and  his 
funeral  music  ends  in  a  high  enthusiasm 
and  serenity  open  to  no  misconception. 
Distance,  and  the  lapse  of  time,  and  his 
own  utter  reconciliation  to  the  play  of 
events  make  small  difference  in  his  utter 
ance  upon  the  old  topic.  The  thought  of 


his  friend,  forty  years  after,  is  the  same 
mystical  rapture : 

"O  could  I  track  them!    but  souls  must 

Track  one  the  other; 
And  now  the  spirit,  not  the  dust, 

Must  be  thy  brother : 
Yet  I  have  one  pearl  by  whose  light 

All  things  I  see, 
And  in  the  heart  of  death  and  night, 

Find  Heaven  and  thee." 

Daphnis,  the  eclogue  to  the  memory 
of  Thomas  Vaughan,  is  the  only  one  of 
these  elegies  which,  possessing  a  surplus 
of  beautiful  lines,  is  not  even  in  the  least 
satisfying.  "  R.  Hall,"  "  no  woolsack  sol 
dier,"  who  was  slain  at  the  siege  of  Pon- 
tefract,  won  from  Henry  Vaughan  a  pas 
sionate  requiem,  which  opens  with  a  gush 
of  agony,  "  I  knew  it  would  be  thus  !"  as 
affecting  as  anything  in  the  early  ballads; 
and  the  battle  of  Rowton  Heath  took 
from  him  "  R.  W.,"  the  comrade  of  his 
youth.  But  it  was  in  one  who  bore  his 
sovereign's  name  (hitherto  unidentified, 
although  he  is  said  to  have  been  the  sub 
ject  of  a  "  public  sorrow  ")  that  Vaughan 
lost  the  friend  upon  whom  his  whole  nat 
ure  seemed  to  lean.  The  soldier-heart  in 


himself  spoke  out  firmly  in  the  cry  he 
consecrated  To  the  Pious  Memory  of  C.  W. 
Its  masculine  dignity;  the  pride  and  soft 
triumph  which  it  gathers  about  it,  ad 
vancing;  the  plain  heroic  ending  which 
sweeps  away  all  images  of  remoteness 
and  gloom,  in 

"Good-morrow  to  dear  Charles!    for  it  is  day," 

can  be  compared  to  nothing  but  an  agi 
tato  of  Schubert's  mounting  strings,  slow 
ing  to  their  major  chord  with  a  courage 
and  cheer  that  bring  tears  to  the  eyes. 
Vaughan's  tender  threnodies  would  make 
a  small  but  precious  volume.  To  the 
Pious  Memory,  with  Thou  that  Knoivest 
for  Whom  I  Mourn,  Silence  and  Stealth 
of  Days,  Joy  of  my  Life  while  Left  me 
Here,  I  Walked  the  other  Day  to  spend 
my  Hour,  The  Morning  Watch,  and  Be 
yond  the  Veil,  are  alone  enough  to  give 
him  rank  forever  as  a  genius  and  a  good 
man. 

"  C.  W.'s  "  death  was  one  of  the  things 
which  turned  him  forever  from  temporal 
pursuits  and  pleasures.  Of  his  first  wife 
we  can  find  none  but  conjectural  traces 


in  his  books,  for  he  was  shy  of  using  the 
beloved  name.  The  sense  of  those  de 
parted  is  never  far  from  him.  The  air 
of  melancholy  recollection,  not  morbid, 
which  hangs  over  his  maturer  lyrics,  is 
directly  referable  to  the  close-following 
calamities  which  estranged  him  from  the 
presence  of  "  the  blessed  few,"  and  sent 
him,  as  he  nobly  hoped, 

"  Home  from  their  dust  to  empty  his  own  glass." 

His  thoughts  centred,  henceforward,  in 
their  full  intensity,  on  the  supernatural 
world  ;  nay,  if  he  were  irremediably  de 
pressed,  not  only  on  the  persistence  of 
resolved  matter,  by  means  of  which  bur 
ied  men  come  forth  again  in  the  color  of 
flowers  and  the  fragrance  of  the  wind, 
but  even  on  the  physical  damp  and  dark 
which  confine  Our  mortality.  It  is  the 
poet  of  dawn  and  of  crisp  mountain  air 
who  can  pack  horror  on  horror  into  his 
nervous  quatrains  about  Death  : 

"A  nest  of  nights;    a  gloomy  sphere 

Where  shadows  thicken,  and  the  cloud 
Sits  on  the  sUn's  brow  all  the  year, 
And  nothing  moves  without  a  shroud." 


This  is  masterly  ;  but  here,  again,  there  is 
reserve,  the  curbing  hand  of  a  man  who 
holds,  with  Plato,  a  wilful  indulgence  in 
the  "  realism  "  of  sadness  to  be  an  actual 
crime.  Vaughan's  dead  dwell,  indeed,  as 
his  own  mind  does,  in  "the  world  of 
light."  As  his  corporeal  sight  is  always 
upon  the  zenith  or  the  horizon,  so  his 
fancy  is  far  away,  with  his  radiant  ideals, 
and  with  the  virtue  and  beauty  he  has 
walked  with  in  the  flesh.  He  takes  his 
harp  to  the  topmost  hill,  and  sits  watch 
ing 

"till  the  white-winged  reapers  come." 

He  thinks  of  his  obscured  self,  the  child 
he  was,  and  of  "the  narrow  way"  (an 
ever-recurrent  Scriptural  phrase  in  his 
poetry)  by  which. he  shall  "travel  back." 
To  leave  the  body  is  merely  to  start 
anew  and  recover  strength,  and,  with  it, 
the  inspiring  companionship  of  which  he 
is  inscrutably  deprived. 

Chambers'  Cyclopaedia  made  an  epic 
blunder,  long  ago,  when  it  ascribed  to 
this  gentlest  of  Anglicans  a  "  gloomy  sec^ 
tarianism."  He,  of  all  religious  poets. 


n6 


makes  the  most  charming  secular  read 
ing,  and  may  well  be  a  favorite  with  the 
heathen  for  whom  Herbert  is  too  deco 
rative,  Crashaw  too  hectic  and  intense, 
Cowper  too  fearful,  and  Faber  too  fluent; 
Lyra  Apostolica  a  treatise,  though  a  glo 
rious  one,  on  Things  which  Must  be  Re 
vived,  and  Hymns  Ancient  and  Modern 
an  exceeding  weariness  to  the  spirit.  It 
is  a  saw  of  Dr.  Johnson's  that  it  is  impos 
sible  for  theology  to  clothe  itself  in  at 
tractive  numbers;  but  then  Dr.  Johnson 
was  ignorant  of  Vaughan.  It  is  not  in 
human  nature  to  refuse  to  cherish  the 
"  holy,  happy,  healthy  Heaven  "  which  he 
has  left  us  (in  a  graded  alliteration  which 
smacks  of  the  physician  rather  than  of 
the  "gloomy  sectarian  "),  his  very  social 
"  angels  talking  to  a  mag,"  and  his  bright 
saints,  hovering  and  smiling  nigh,  who 

"are  indeed  our  pillar-fires 

Seen  as  we  go  ; 

They  are  the  city's  shining  spires 
We  travel  to." 

Who  can  resist  the  earnestness  and  can 
dor  with  which,  in  a  few  sessions,  he 
wrote  down  the  white  passion  of  the  last 


fifty  years  of  his  life?  No  English  poet, 
unless  it  be  Spenser,  has  a  piety  so  simple 
and  manly,  so  colored  with  mild  thought, 
so  free  from  emotional  consciousness. 
The  elect  given  over  to  continual  po 
lemics  do  not  count  Henry  Vaughan  as 
one  of  themselves.  His  double  purpose 
is  to  make  life  pleasant  to  others  and  to 
praise  God  ;  and  he  considers  that  he  is 
accomplishing  it  when  he  pens  a  com 
pliment  to  the  valley  grass,  or,  like  Cole 
ridge,  caresses  in  some  affectionate  stro 
phes  the  much-abused  little  ass.  All  this 
liberal  sweetness  and  charity  heighten 
Vaughan's  poetic  quality,  as  they  deepen 
the  impression  of  his  practical  Christian 
ity.  The  nimbus  is  about  his  laic  songs. 
When  he  talks  of  moss  and  rocks,  it  is  as 
if  they  were  incorporated  into  the  ritual. 
He  has  the  genius  of  prayer,  and  may  be 
recognized  by  "  those  graces  which  walk 
in  a  veil  and  a  silence."  He  is  full  of 
distinction,  and  of  a  sort  of  golden  idio 
syncrasy.  Vaughan's  true  "  note  "  is — 
Vaughan.  To  read  him  is  like  coming 
alone  to  a  village  church-yard  with  trees, 
where  the  west  is  dying,  in  hues  of  lilac 


n8 


and  rose,  behind  the  low  ivied  Norman 
tower.  The  south  windows  are  open,  the 
young  choir  are  within,  and  the  organist, 
with  many  a  hushed  unconventional  in 
terlude  of  his  own,  is  rehearsing  with 
them  the  psalm  of  "pleasures  for  ever 
more." 


Ill 

GEORGE    FARQUHAR 

1677-1707 


GEORGE   FARQUHAR 

HERE  is  a  narrow  dark  Es 
sex  Street  West  in  the  city 
of  Dublin,  running  between 
Fishamble  Street  and  Essex 
Gate,  at  the  rear  of  the  Lower 
Blind  Quay.  The  older  people  still  blunt 
ly  call  it  what  it  was  called  before  1830  : 
Smock  Alley.  On  its  north  side  stands 
the  sufficiently  ugly  church  of  SS.  Mi 
chael  and  John.  The  arched  passage 
still  in  use,  parallel  with  the  nave  of  this 
church,  was  the  entrance  to  a  theatre  on 
the  same  site ;  what  is  now  the  burial 
vault  was  once  the  pit,  full  of  ruddy  and 
uproarious  faces.  The  theatre,  erected 
about  1660,  which  had  a  long,  stormy  and 
eventful  history,  was  rebuilt  in  1735,  and 
having  been  turned  into  a  warehouse,  fell 
into  decay,  to  be  replaced  by  a  building  of 
another  clay.  But  while  it  was  still  itself, 


it  was  great  and  popular,  and  the  lane 
between  Trinity  College  and  the  old 
arched  passage  was  choked  every  night 
with  the  press  of  jolly  youths,  who,  as 
Archbishop  King  pathetically  complain 
ed,  appeared  to  love  the  play  better  than 
study !  Among  those  who  hung  about 
Smock  Alley  like  a  barnacle  in  the  years 
1694  and  1695,  was  a  certain  George  Far- 
quhar,  son  of  William,*  a  poor  Lon 
donderry  clergyman  of  the  Establish 
ment;  a  long- faced  peculiar  lad  of  mild 
mien  but  high  spirits.  He  had  come 


*  Incipit  Annus  Academicus  Die  Julii  9"  1694. 


Die 

17a 
Julii 

Georgius 
Farquhare 
Sizator 

filius 
Gulielmi 
Farqhare 
Clerici 

An- 

nos 

'7 

Natus 
London 
derry 

ibidem  edu- 
catus  sub 
niagistro 
Walker 

Ku.  Lloyd 

(•college 
tutor; 

This  matriculation  entry  from  the  register  of  Trinity  does 
away  with  our  sizar's  presumed  father,  Rev.  John  Far- 
quhar,  prebendary  of  Raphoe.  We  hear  nothing  more, 
ever  after,  of  the  Farquhar  family,  who  henceforth  leave 
young  George  to  his  own  profane  devices ;  nor  can  any 
certainty  be  attached  to  additional  information,  sometimes 
proffered,  that  the  father  had  seven  children  in  all,  and 
held  a  living  of  only  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  a 
year.  One  other  point  is  fixed  by  the  entry,  to  wit :  if 
George  Farquhar  was  seventeen  in  the  July  of  1694,  he 
cannot  have  been  born  in  1678. 


123 


from  the  north,  under  episcopal  patron 
age,  to  wear  a  queer  dress  among  his  so 
cial  betters,  to  sweep  and  scour  and  car 
ry  tankards  of  ale  to  the  Fellows  in  hall ; 
and  incidentally,  to  imbibe,  on  his  own 
part,  the  lore  of  all  the  ages.  The  major 
event  in  his  history  is  that,  instead  of  sit 
ting  up  nights  over  Isocrates  de  Pace, 
he  slipped  off  to  see  Robert  Wilkes  and 
the  stock  company,  and  to  decide  that 
acting,  or,  as  he  afterwards  sarcastically 
defined  it,  ''tearing  his  Lungs  for  a  Live 
lihood,"  was  also  the  thing  for  him. 
Wherefore,  at  eighteen,  either  because 
his  benefactor,  Bishop  Wiseman  of  Dro- 
more,  had  died,  or  else,  as  is  not  very 
credibly  reported,  because  he  was  cash 
iered  from  his  class,  Master  Farquhar, 
cut  loose  from  his  old  moorings,  applied 
to  Manager  Ashbury  of  the  Dublin  Thea 
tre,  and  to  such  avail  that  he  was  able 
presently  to  make  his  own  appearance 
there  as  no  less  a  personage  than  Othello. 
He  had  a  weak  voice  and  a  shy  presence ; 
but  the  public  encouraged  him.  One  of 
his  first  parts  was  that  of  Guyomar,  Mon- 
tezuma's  younger  brother,  in  Dryden's 


tragedy  of  The  Indian  Emperor.  In  the 
fifth  act,  as  soon  as  he  had  declaimed  to 
Vasquez  in  sounding  sing-song  : 

"Friendship  with  him  whose  hand  did  Odmar  kill? 
Base  as  he  was,  he  was  my  brother  still ! 
But  since  his  blood  has  washed  away  his  guilt, 
Nature  asks  thine  for  that  which  thou  hast  spilt," 

he  made,  according  to  stage  directions, 
a  fierce  lunge  at  his  too  conciliatory  foe. 
Guyomar  had  armed  himself,  inadver 
tently,  with  a  genuine  sword,  and  Vas 
quez  came  near  enough  to  being  killed 
in  the  flesh.  The  man  eventually  recov 
ered  ;  but  it  shows  of  what  impressiona 
ble  stuff  Farquhar  was  made,  that  his 
mental  horror  and  pain,  during  that  mo 
ment  while  he  believed  he  had  slain  a 
fellow -creature,  should  have  turned  the 
course  of  his  life.  He  left  the  stage; 
nor  would  he  return  to  it.  Some  eight 
years  after,  indeed,  he  visited  Dublin 
again,  and  on  the  old  boards  played  Sir 
Harry  Wildair  for  his  own  benefit ;  but 
this  was  at  a  time  when  he  forced  him 
self  to  undertake  all  honorable  chances 
of  money-making,  out  of  his  consuming 
anxiety  for  his  family. 


Wilkes  and  his  wife  returned  to  Lon 
don,  and  the  lad  Farquhar  went  with 
them.  He  obtained  a  commission  in  the 
army  from  the  Earl  of  Orrery ;  he  was  in 
Holland  on  duty  during  a  part  of  the 
year  1700,  and  came  back  to  England 
with  one  of  her  earliest  military  red  coats 
on  his  back,  in  the  train  of  his  much-ap 
proved  sovereign,  William  III.  He  had 
already  written,  thanks  to  Wilkes  and 
his  incessant  urging,  his  first  two  plays, 
and  had  seen  them  successful  at  Drury 
Lane;*  he  had  also  overheard  with  en 
thusiasm,  at  the  Mitre  Tavern  in  St. 
James's  Market,  Mistress  Nance  Old- 
field,  an  orphan  of  sixteen,  niece  of  the 
proprietress,  reading  The  Scornful  Lady 
behind  the  bar.  Captain  Vanbrugh  was 
duly  told  of  Farquhar's  delight  and  ad 
miration,  and  on  the  strength  of  them  in 
troduced  the  girl  to  Rich,  who  did  few 
things  so  good  in  his  lifetime  as  when  he 
put  her  upon  the  stage  at  fifteen  shillings 
a  week.  It  was  not  long  before  this  dis 
tinguished  actress  and  generous  woman, 

*  This  was  the  theatre  built  by  Sir  Christopher  Wren 
in  1672. 


126 


destined  to  lend  her  gayety  and  beautiful 
bearing  to  the  interpretation  of  Far- 
quhar's  women,  enlivened  the  town  as  the 
glorious  Sylvia  of  The  Recruiting  Officer, 
who  can  "  gallop  all  the  morning  after  a 
hunting-horn,  and  all  the  evening  after 
a  fiddle." 

"We  hear  of  Farquhar  at  one  time," 
says  Leigh  Hunt,  in  a  pretty  summary, 
"  in  Essex,  hare-hunting  (not  in  the  style 
of  a  proficient) ;  at  another,  at  Richmond, 
sick ;  and  at  a  third,  in  Shropshire  on  a 
recruiting  party,  where  he  was  treated 
with  great  hospitality,  and  found  material 
for  one  of  the  best  of  his  plays." 

Love  and  a  Bottle  inaugurated  the  vogue 
of  the  Farquhar  comedy ;  and  Wilkes, 
whose  name  in  London  carried  favor  and 
precedence,  was  the  Roebuck  of  the  cast. 
Its  successors,  The  Constant  Couple  (with 
a  framework  transferred  and  adapted 
from  its  author's  earlier  Adventures  of 
Covent  Garden},  and  its  sequel,  Sir  Har 
ry  IVildair,  again  championed  by  the 
"  friendly  and  indefatigable  "  Wilkes,  who 
impersonated  the  engaging  rakish  heroes, 
had  long  runs,  and  firmly  established 


their  author's  fame.  In  1702  Farquhar 
produced  The  Inconstant  (which  he  had 
perverted  from  Fletcher's  Wild  Goose 
Chase,  as  if  a  fit  setting  were  sought  for 
the  wonderfully  effective  last  act  of  his 
own  devising) ;  and  after  The  Inconstant, 
The  Twin  Rivals.  The  Stage  Coach,  a 
one -act  farce  in  which  he  had  a  col 
laborator,*  dates  from  1704,  and  The  Re 
cruiting  Officer  from  1706;  The  Beaux' 
Stratagem  was  written  in  the  spring 
of  1707.  This  is  a  working  record  of 
barely  nine  years  ;  it  represents  a  secure 
and  continuous  artistic  advance ;  and  it 
should  have  brought  its  patient  origina 
tor  something  better  than  the  privilege 
of  dying  young,  "broken-hearted,"  as 
he  confessed  to  Wilkes,  "and  without  a 
shilling." 

Farquhar  had  but  the  trifling  income 
of  an  officer's  pay  on  which  to  support 
his  wife  and  his  two  little  daughters.  He 
seems  to  have  sought  no  political  prefer- 

*  Peter  Anthony  M  otteux,  the  wild  and  clever  linguist 
and  dramatist,  who  made  the  best  English  translation  of 
Don  Quixote.  The  Stage  Coach,  itself  an  adaptation, 
has  little  merit  beyond  its  liveliness. 


128 


ment,  nor  did  his  numerous  patrons  put 
themselves  out  to  advance  him,  although 
these  were  the  very  days  when  men  of 
letters  were  crowded  into  the  public  ser 
vice.  Ever  and  anon  he  received  fifteen 
guineas,  then  a  very  handsome  sum,  for  a 
play.  Perhaps,  like  his  rash  gallants,  he 
had  "  a  head  to  get  money,  and  a  heart  to 
spend  it."  He  greatly  wished  success,  for 
the  sake  of  those  never  absent  from  his 
thought ;  and  he  complained  bitterly 
when  the  French  acrobats  and  rope- 
dancers  took  from  The  Twin  Rivals  the 
attention  of  pleasure-seeking  Londoners, 
much  as  poor  Haydon  complained  after 
wards  of  the  crowds  who  surged  down 
Piccadilly,  to  behold  not  his  "Christ's 
Entry  into  Jerusalem  "  at  all,  but  General 
Tom  Thumb,  holding  court  under  the 
same  roof. 

When  Farquhar's  health  was  breaking, 
and  debts  began  to  involve  him  at  last, 
it  appears  that  the  Earl  of  Ormonde, 
his  general,  prompted  him  to  sell  his 
commission  in  order  to  liquidate  them, 
and  agreed  to  give  him  a  captaincy.  Or, 
as  is  yet  more  probable,  in  view  of  the 


fact  that  Farquhar  was  already  known  by 
the  title  of  captain,  he  was  urged  to  sell 
out  of  the  army,  on  a  given  pledge  that 
preferment  of  another  sort  awaited  him. 
His  other  industrious  devices  to  secure 
support  for  four  having  missed  fire,  he 
gladly  performed  his  part  of  the  trans 
action,  only  to  experience  a  fatal  delay 
on  the  part  of  my  Lord  Ormonde,  whose 
mind  had  strayed  to  larger  matters.  In 
fine,  the  unkept  promise  hurt  the  sub 
altern  to  the  heart;  he  sank,  literally 
from  that  hour,  of  grief  and  disquietude. 
Lintott  the  stationer,  and  his  old  friend 
Wilkes  stood  manfully  by  him,  one  with 
liberal  payment  in  advance,  and  one  with 
affectionate  furtherance  and  gifts ;  but 
Farquhar  did  not  rally.  It  was  to  Wilkes, 
as  everybody  knows,  that  he  penned  this 
most  touching  testament :  "  Dear  Bob,  I 
have  not  anything  to  leave  thee  to  per 
petuate  my  memory  but  two  helpless 
girls.  Look  upon  them  sometimes  !  and 
think  of  him  who  was,  to  the  last  mo 
ment  of  his  life,  thine."  The  end  came 
on  or  about  April  29,  1707,  George  Far 
quhar  being  just  thirty  years  of  age. 


130 


While  he  lay  dying  in  Soho,  his  last  and 
best  comedy  was  in  progress  at  the  new 
magnificent  Haymarket,  and  his  audi 
ences,  with  a  barren  benevolence  not  un 
characteristic  of  the  unthinking  human 
species,  are  said  to  have  wept  for  him. 
He  was  buried  in  the  parish  church-yard 
of  St.  Martin-in-the-Fields,*  where  Nell 
Gwynne's  contrite  ashes  lay,  and  where 
her  legacied  bells  tolled  for  his  passing. 

Farquhar's  name  is  always  coupled 
with  those  of  Congreve,  Wycherley,  and 
Vanbrugh,  although  in  spirit  and  also  in 
point  of  time  he  was  removed  from  the 
influences  which  formed  them.  Many 
critics,  notably  Hazlitt,  Macaulay,  and 
Thackeray,  have  allowed  him  least  men 
tion  of  the  four,  but  he  is,  in  reality,  the 
best  playwright  among  them  ;  and  it  is 
greatly  to  the  credit  of  a  discreditable 

*  The  register  of  burial  is  dated  a  month  later  than 
the  received  date  of  his  death.  It  reads  simply:  23  May, 
George  Falkwere,  M."  The  initial  is  the  sapient  sex 
ton's  indication  that  this  was  neither  a  W  (woman)  nor  a 
C  (child).  The  spelling  of  the  name  betokens  its  usual 
and  original  pronunciation.  The  present  famous  porti- 
coed  church  was  not  built  for  nineteen  years  after  Far- 
quhar  died. 


period  if  he  be  taken  as  its  represent 
ative.  He  had  Vanbrugh's  exuberant 
vivacity,  Congreve's  grace,  Wycherley's 
knack  of  climax.  Wycherley,  retiring 
into  private  life  when  Farquhar  was 
born,  lived  to  see  his  exit;  Etherege  was 
then  at  his  zenith ;  Dryden's  All  for 
Love  was  in  the  printer's  case,  and  Ot- 
way,  almost  on  the  point  of  his  two  great 
works,  was  coming  home  ragged  from 
Flanders  :  Otway,  whose  boyish  ventures 
on  the  stage,  and  whose  subsequent  sol 
diering,  Farquhar  was  so  closely  to  follow. 
Pope,  and  a  gentler  observer,  Steele, 
found  Farquhar's  dialogue  "  low,"  and  so 
it  must  have  sounded  between  the  brave 
surviving  extravagances  of  the  Jacobean 
buskin  and  the  modulated  utterances  of 
Cato  and  The  Revenge.  A  practical  talent 
like  Farquhar's  was  bound  to  provoke 
hard  little  words  from  the  Popes  who 
shrank  from  his  spontaneous  style,  and 
the  Steeles  who  could  not  approve  of  the 
gross  themes  he  had  inherited.  For  sheer 
good-breeding,  some  scenes  in  The  Way 
of  the  World  can  never  be  surpassed  ; 
they  prove  that  one  cannot  hold  the  stage 


132 


by  talk  alone.  It  Is  fortunate  for  Far- 
quhar  that  he  could  not  emulate  the 
exquisitely  civilized  depravities  of  Con- 
greve's  urban  Muse.  But  his  dialogue  is 
not  "low"  to  modern  tastes;  it  has,  in 
general,  a  simple,  natural  zest,  infinite 
ly  preferable  to  the  Persian  apparatus 
of  the  early  eighteenth  ceu.ury.  Even 
he,  however,  can  rant  and  deviate  into 
rhetoric,  as  soon  as  his  lovers  drop  upon 
one  knee.  More  plainly  in  Farquhar's 
work  than  in  that  of  any  contemporary, 
we  mark  the  glamour  of  the  Caroline 
literature  fading,  and  the  breath  of  life 
blowing  in.  An  essentially  Protestant 
nationalism  began  to  settle  down  upon 
England  for  good  and  all  with  William 
and  Mary,  and  it  brought  subtle  changes 
to  bear  upon  the  arts,  the  trades,  the 
sports,  and  the  manners  of  the  people. 
In  Farquhar's  comedies  we  have  the  re 
flex  of  a  dulling  and  strengthening  age ; 
the  fantasticalities  of  the  last  three  reigns 
are  all  but  gone;  the  Vandyck  dresses 
gleam  and  swish  no  longer.  Speech  be 
comes  more  pert  and  serviceable,  in  a 
vocabulary  of  lesser  range  ;  lives  are  vul- 


133 


garizing,  that  is,  humanizing,  and  getting 
closer  to  common  unromantic  concerns ; 
no  such  delicately  unreal  creature  as  Mill- 
amant,  all  fire  and  dew  and  perfumery, — 
Millamant  who  could  not  suffer  to  have 
her  hair  done  up  in  papers  written  in 
prose,  and  who,  quite  by  herself,  is  a  vin 
dication  of  what  Mr.  Allibone  is  pleased 
to  call  "  Lamb's  sophistical  and  mischiev 
ous  essay,"— walks  the  world  of  Farquhar. 
With  him,  notwithstanding  that  the  sorry 
business  to  be  despatched  is  the  same  old 
amorous  intrigue,  come  in  at  once  less 
license,  less  affectation,  less  Gallicism. 
He  reports  from  the  beginning  what  he 
himself  apprehends;  his  plays  are  short 
hand  notes,  albeit  timid  in  character,  upon 
the  transitional  and  prosaic  time.  His 
company  is  made  up  of  individuals  he 
had  seen  in  a  thousand  lights  at  the 
Spread  Eagle  and  the  Rummer ;  in  the 
Inner  Temple  and  in  St.  James's  Park  ; 
in  barracks  domestic  and  foreign  ;  and 
in  his  native  place,  where  adventurers, 
eloquent  in  purest  Londonderry,*  stum- 

*  The  not  altogether  foolish  censure  has  been  cast  upon 
the  rogue  Teague  in  The  Twin  Rivals  that  he  speaks  an 


bled  along  full  of  whiskey  and  ideas. 
He  anticipates  certain  phases  of  Private 
Ortheris's  thorough -going  love  of  Lon 
don,  and  figures  his  exiled  Dicky  as  "just 
dead  of  a  consumption,  till  the  sweet 
smoke  of  Cheapside  and  the  dear  per 
fume  of  Fleet- ditch  "  made  him  a  man 
again.  In  this  laughing  affectionate  ap- 

impossible  brogue,  which  might  as  well  be  Welsh.  Far- 
quhar  did  not  succeed  in  transferring  to  paper  the  weird  and 
unlovely  Ulster  dialect  with  which  he  was  familiar  in  boy 
hood,  and  which  had  figured  already  in  the  third  act  of  Henry 
the  Fifth,  in  Jonson's  Irish  masque,  in  Shadwell's  Lanca 
shire  Witches;  which  was  simultaneously  being  used  in 
his  farce  The  Committee,  by  Dryden's  friend  Howard, 
and  which  was  afterwards  to  have  good  corroboration  in 
Aytoun's  Massacre  of  the  MacPherson.  Farquhar  em 
ploys  it  twice  elsewhere,  passably  well  in  the  case  of 
Torlough  Macahone  of  the  parish  of  Curroughabegley 
(the  personage  who  built  a  mansion-house  for  himself  and 
his  predecessors  after  him),  and  with  lamentable  flatness  in 
that  of  Dugard  in  his  last  comedy.  Dugard  is  a  rival  of 
the  nursery-maid  dear  to  almanac  humorists,  who  is  wont 
to  exclaim  :  "  Can't  ye  tell  boi  me  accint  that  'tis  Frinch 
Oi  am  !"  It  was  one  of  Farquhar' s  inartistic  mistakes  that 
he  made  no  loving  study  of  this  or  of  anything  touching 
nearly  his  own  people.  His  Irishmen,  with  the  exception 
of  Roebuck,  are  either  rascals  or  characterless  nobodies. 
The  name  Teague,  or  Teig,  which  Howard  had  also  em 
ployed,  is  old  and  pure  North  Irish  ;  and  no  less  pleasant 
an  authority  than  George  Borrow  reminds  us  in  the 
Romano  Lavo-Lil  that  it  is  Danish  in  origin. 


135 


prehension  of  the  local  and  the  temporal 
lies  Farquhar's  whole  strength  or  weak 
ness.  From  the  poets  of  the  Restora 
tion  there  escapes,  most  incongruously, 
now  and  then,  something  which  betokens 
a  sense  of  natural  beauty,  or  even  a  recog 
nition  of  the  divine  law;  but  Farquhar 
is  not  a  poet,  and  this  spray  from  the 
deeps  is  not  in  him.  He  perceives  noth 
ing  that  is  not,  and  opens  no  crack  or 
chink  where  the  fancy  can  air  itself  for  a 
moment  and 

— "step  grandly  out  into  the  infinite." 

Such  a  lack  would  not  be  worth  remark 
ing  in  the  debased  and  insincere  writers 
who  but  just  preceded  him.  But  from 
the  very  date  of  his  first  dealings  with 
London  managers,  idealism  was  abroad, 
and  a  man  with  affinities  for  "the  things 
that  are  more  excellent "  need  have  feared 
no  longer  to  divulge  them,  since  the 
court  and  the  people,  if  not  the  domi 
nant  town  gentry,  were  with  him.  Far 
quhar  had  neither  the  full  moral  illumi 
nation  nor  the  will,  though  he  had  the 
capacity,  to  lend  a  hand  to  the  blessed 


136 


work  waiting  for  the  opportunist.  He  was 
young,  he  was  of  provincial  nurture  ;  he 
was  carried  away  by  the  theatrical  tradi 
tion.  Yet  his  mind  was  a  Medea's  ket 
tle,  out  of  which  everything  issued  clean 
er  and  more  wholesome.  Despite  the 
prodigious  animal  spirits  of  his  charac 
ters,  they  conduct  their  mad  concerns 
with  sense  and  moderation  ;  they  manage 
tacitly  to  proclaim  themselves  as  tem 
porarily  "  on  a  tear,"  as  going  forth  to 
angle  in  angling  weather,  and  as  likely  to 
lead  sober  citizen  lives  from  to-morrow 
on.  Under  bad  old  maintained  condi 
tions  they  develop  traits  approximately 
worthy  of  the  Christian  Hero.  They 
"look  before  and  after."  They  are  to 
be  classed  as  neutrals  and  nondescripts, 
for  they  have  all  the  swagger  of  their 
lax  progenitors,  and  none  of  their  dev 
iltry.  They  belong  professionally  to 
one  family,  while  they  bear  a  tanta 
lizing  resemblance  to  another.  Far- 
quhar  himself,  perhaps  unaware  that  par 
tisanship  is  better  than  compromise, 
made  his  bold  toss  for  bays  both  spirit 
ual  and  temporal.  Imitating,  as  novices 


137 


will  ever  do,  the  art  back  of  him,  he 
adopted  the  claim  to  approbation  which 
that  art  never  dreamed  of.  In  the  very 
good  preface  to  The  Twin  Rivals  (which 
has  always  been  approved  of  critics  rath 
er  than  of  audiences),  he  sets  up  for  a 
castigator  of  vice  and  folly,  and  he  offers 
to  appease  "the  ladies  and  the  clergy," 
as,  in  some  measure  apparent  to  the 
more  metaphysical  among  them,  he 
may  have  done.  His  friend,  Mr.  John 
Hopkins,  the  author  of  Amasia,  invited, 
on  behalf  of  The  Constant  Couple,  the 
commendation  of  Collier.  That  open- 
minded  censor  may  have  seen  with 
satisfaction,  in  the  general  trend  of 
Farquhar's  composition,  the  less  and  less 
dubious  day-beams  of  Augustan  decency. 
Though  Farquhar  did  not  live,  like  Van- 
brugh  and  the  magnanimous  Dryden,  to 
admit  the  abuse  of  a  gift,  and  to  deplore 
it,  he  alone,  of  the  minor  dramatists, 
seems  all  along  to  have  had  a  negative 
sort  of  conscience  better  than  none.  His 
instincts  continually  get  the  better  not 
only  of  his  environment,  but  of  his  prac 
tice.  Some  uneasiness,  some  misgiving, 


138 


are  at  the  bottom  of  his  homely  material 
ism.  He  thinks  it  best,  on  the  whole,  to 
forswear  the  temptation  to  be  sublime, 
and  to  keep  to  his  cakes  and  ale ;  and 
for  cakes  and  ale  he  had  an  eminent 
and  inborn  talent.  What  was  ably  said 
of  Hogarth,  the  great  exemplar,  will  cov 
er  all  practicians  of  his  school :  "  He 
had  an  intense  feeling  for  and  com 
mand  over  the  impressions  of  senses  and 
habit,  of  character  and  passion,  the  seri 
ous  and  the  comic  ;  in  a  word,  of  nature 
as  it  fell  in  with  his  own  observation,  or 
came  into  the  sphere  of  his  actual  expe 
rience.  But  he  had  little  power  beyond 
that  sphere,  or  sympathy  for  that  which 
existed  only  in  idea.  He  was  'conformed 
to  this  world,  not  transformed.' "  Or, 
as  Leigh  Hunt,  in  his  beautiful  memoir, 
adds,  with  acuteness,  of  Farquhar  him 
self  :  "  He  could  turn  what  he  had  ex 
perienced  in  common  life  to  the  best  ac 
count,  but  he  required  in  all  cases  the 
support  of  ordinary  associations,  and  could 
not  project  his  spirit  beyond  them."  In 
short,  Farquhar  lacked  imagination.  He 
had  insight,  however,  of  another  order, 


which  is  his  praise,  and  which  distin 
guishes  him  from  all  his  fellows  :  he  had 
sympathy  and  charity. 

The  major  blot  on  the  literature  of  the 
English  stage  of  the  period  is  not  its 
libertinism,  but  rather  its  concomitant 
utter  heartlessness.  "  Arrogance  "  (so,  ac 
cording  to  Erasmus,  that  ascetic  scholar 
Dean  Colet  used  to  remind  his  clergy) 
"  is  worse  than  a  hundred  concubines." 
The  slight  sporadic  touches  of  tender 
ness,  of  pity,  of  disinterested  generosity, 
to  be  found  by  patient  search  in  Con- 
greve,  come  in  boldly  with  Farquhar, 
and  boldly  overrun  his  prompter's  books. 
Vanbrugh's  scenes  stand  on  nothing  but 
their  biting  and  extravagant  sarcasm. 
As  Congreve's  characters  are  indiscrim 
inately  witty,  so  Vanbrugh's  are  univer 
sally  and  wearisomely  cynical,  and  at  the 
expense  of  themselves  and  all  society. 
His  women  in  high  life  have  no  individ 
uality;  they  wear  stings  of  one  pattern. 
The  genial  conception  of  the  shrewd, 
material  Mrs.  Amlet,  however,  in  The 
Confederacy,  is  worthy  of  Farquhar,  and 
certainly  Congreve  himself  could  not 


have  bettered  her  in  the  execution. 
Etherege's  typical  Man  of  Mode  is  a  tis 
sue  of  untruth,  hardness,  and  scorn,  all 
in  impeccable  attire ;  a  most  mournful 
spectacle.  Thinking  of  such  dainty  mon 
sters,  Macaulay  let  fly  his  famous  invec 
tive  against  their  creators  :  "  Foreheads 
of  bronze,  hearts  like  the  nether  mill 
stone,  and  tongues  set  on  fire  of  hell !" 
George  Farquhar  may  be  exempted  al 
together  from  this  too -deserved  com 
pliment.  There  is  honest  mirth  in  his 
world  of  fiction,  there  is  dutifulness, 
there  is  true  love,  there  are  good  wom 
en  ;  there  is  genuine  friendship  between 
Roebuck  and  Lovewell,  between  True- 
man  and  Hermes  Wouldbe,  between  Aim- 
well  and  Archer,  and  between  the  green 
Turn  mas  of  The  Recruiting  Officer  and 
his  Costar,  whom  he  cannot  leave  behind. 
Sylvia,  Angelica,  Constance,  Leanthe, 
Oriana,  Dorinda,  free-spoken  as  they  are, 
how  they  shine,  and  with  what  morning 
freshness,  among  the  tiger-lilies  of  that 
evil  garden  of  the  Restoration  drama! 
These  heroines  are  an  innovation,  for 
they  are  maids,  not  wedded  wives.  As 


to  the  immortal  periwigged  young  bloods 
their  suitors,  they  are  "  real  gentlemen," 
as  Hazlitt,  who  loved  Farquhar,  called 
them,  "and  only  pretended  impostors;" 
or,  to  quote  Farquhar 's  latest  editor,  Mr. 
A.  C.  Ewald,  they  are  "  always  men  and 
never  yahoos."  Their  author  had  no 
interest  in  "  preferring  vice,  and  render 
ing  virtue  dull  and  despicable."  Their 
praise  may  be  negative,  but  it  establishes 
a  wide  wall  of  difference  between  them 
and  the  fops  and  cads  with  whom  they 
have  been  confounded.  In  their  con 
versations,  glistening  with  epigram  and 
irony,  malevolence  has  no  part ;  they 
sneer  at  no  virtue,  they  tamper  with 
none ;  and  at  every  turn  of  a  selfish 
campaign  they  find  opportunity  for  hon 
orable  behavior.  From  the  mouths  of 
these  worldlings  comes  satire,  hot  and 
piping,  against  worldliness  ;  for  Farquhar 
is  as  moralizing,  if  not  as  moral,  as  he 
dares  be.  Some  of  the  least  attractive 
of  them,  the  most  greedy  and  contriv 
ing,  have  moments  of  sweetly  whimsical 
and  optimistic  speech.  Thus  Benjamin 
Wouldbe,  the  plotter  against  his  elder 


I42 


brother  in  The  Twin  Rivals,  makes  his 
adieu  after  the  fashion  of  a  true  gal 
lant  :  "  I  scorn  your  beggarly  benevo 
lence  !  Had  my  designs  succeeded,  I 
would  not  have  allowed  you  the  weight 
of  a  wafer,  and  therefore  will  accept 
none."  The  same  person  soars  again 
into  a  fine  Aurelian  speculation  :  "  Show 
me  that  proud  stoic  that  can  bear  suc 
cess  and  champagne  !  Philosophy  can 
support  us  in  hard  fortune,  but  who  can 
have  patience  in  prosperity?"  Over  his 
men  and  women  in  middle  life  Farquhar 
lingers  with  complacence  entirely  for 
eign  to  his  colleagues,  to  whom  mothers, 
guardians,  husbands,  and  other  apple- 
guarding  dragons  were  uniformly  ridicu 
lous  and  odious.  Justice  Balance  is  as 
attractive  as  a  hearth-fire  on  a  Decem 
ber  night ;  so  is  Lady  Bountiful.  Over 
Fairbank,  the  good  goldsmith,  Farqu 
har  gets  fairly  sentimental,  and  permits 
him  to  drop  unaware  into  decasylla 
bics,  like  the  pastoral  author  of  Lorna 
Doom.  His  rogues  are  merely  roguish, 
in  the  softened  sense  of  the  word  ;  in  his 
panorama,  though  black  villains  come 


and  go,  it  is  only  for  an  instant,  and  to 
further  some  one  dramatic  effect.  He 
has  eulogy  for  his  heroes  when  they  de 
serve  it,  and  when  they  do  not  you  may 
trust  him  to  find  a  compassionate  excuse  ; 
as  when  poor  Leanthe  feelingly  says  of 
her  lover  that  "  his  follies  are  weakly 
founded  upon  the  principles  of  honor, 
where  the  very  foundation  helps  to  un 
dermine  the  structure."  Even  Squire  Sul 
len,  for  his  lumpishness,  is  divorced  with 
out  derision,  and  in  a  peal  of  harmless 
laughter.  Farquhar,  indeed,  is  all  gentle 
ness,  all  kindness.  He  had  the  pensive 
attitude  of  the  true  humorist  towards  the 
world  he  laughed  at ;  his  characters  let 
slip  words  too  deep  for  their  living  au 
ditors.  It  is  curious  that  to  a  Restora 
tion  dramatist,  "a  nether  millstone,"  we 
should  owe  a  perfect  brief  description  of 
ideal  married  life.  In  the  scene  of  the 
fourth  act  of  Sir  Harry  Wildair,  where 
Lady  Lurewell,  with  her  "  petrifying  af 
fectation,"  is  trying  to  tease  Sir  Harry 
out  of  all  endurance  on  the  subject  of 
his  wife  (whom  he  believes  to  be  lost  or 
dead),  and  the  degree  of  affection  he  had 


for  her,  he  makes  reply  :  "  My  own  heart 
whispered  me  her  desires,  'cause  she  her 
self  was  there ;  no  contention  ever  rose 
but  the  dear  strife  of  who  should  most 
oblige — no  noise  about  authority,  for  nei 
ther  would  stoop  to  command,  where 
both  thought  it  glory  to  obey."  This  is 
meant  to  be  spoken  rapidly,  and  not 
without  its  tantalizing  lack  of  emphasis; 
but  what  a  pearl  it  is,  set  there  in  the 
superlatively  caustic  dialogue  !  English 
chivalry  and  English  literature  have  no 
such  other  golden  passage  in  their  ru 
brics,  unless  it  be  the  famous  tribute  to 
the  Lady  Elizabeth  Hastings  that  "  to 
love  her  .was  a  liberal  education,"  or 
Lovelace's  unforgettable  song: 

"  I  could  not  love  thee,  dear,  so  much, 
Loved  1  not  Honour  more!" 

The  passage  takes  on  a  very  great  acci 
dental  beauty  when  we  remember  that  it 
required  courage,  in  its  time  and  place, 
to  have  written  it.  It  is  characteristic 
also  of  Farquhar  that  it  should  be  intro 
duced,  as  it  is,  on  the  top  wave  of  a  viva 
cious  and  stormy  conversation,  which  im- 


mediately  sweeps  it  under,  as  if  in  proof 
that  he  understood  both  his  art  and  his 
audience.  The  conjugal  tie,  among  the 
leaders  of  fashion,  was  still  something 
to  laugh  at  and  to  toy  with.  Captain 
Vanbrugh,  from  whom  nobody  need  ex 
pect  much  edification,  had  put  in  the 
mouth  of  his  Constant,  in  a  play  which 
was  a  favorite  with  Garrick,  a  bit  of 
sense  and  sincerity  quoted,  as  it  deserved 
to  be,  by  Hunt:  "  Though  marriage  be  a 
lottery  in  which  there  are  a  wondrous 
many  blanks,  yet  there  is  one  inestimable 
lot  in  which  the  only  heaven  on  earth  is 
written."  And  again  :  "  To  be  capable 
of  loving  one  is  better  than  to  possess  a 
thousand."  This  was  in  1698,  and  Far- 
quhar  therefore  was  not  first,  nor  alone, 
in  daring  to  speak  for  the  derided  idea 
of  wedlock.  Steele  was  soon  to  arise  as 
the  very  champion  of  domestic  life ;  and 
English  wit,  since  he  wrote,  has  never 
subsisted  by  its  mockery  of  the  condi 
tions  which  create 

"home-keeping  days  and  household  reverences." 

But  it  was  Farquhar  who  spoke  in  be- 


i46 


half  of  these  the  most  memorable  word 
of  his  generation.  After  that  lofty  evi 
dence  of  what  he  must  be  suspected  to 
have  been,  it  is  well  to  see,  as  best  we 
may,  what  manner  of  man  George  Far- 
quhar  was.  And  first  let  us  take  some 
extracts  from  his  own  account  of  him 
self,  "  candid  and  modest,"  as  Hunt 
named  it. 

He  gives  us  to  understand  that  he  had 
an  ardent  temperament,  held  in  check 
by  an  introspective  turn  of  thought, 
by  natural  bashful  ness,  and  by  habits 
of  consideration  for  others.  The  por 
trait  is  drawn  from  a  letter  in  the  Mis 
cellanies,  of  "a  mind  and  person  gener 
ally  dressed  in  black,"  and  might  have 
come  bodily,  and  with  charming  grace, 
from  The  Spectator.  "  I  have  very  lit 
tle  estate  but  what  lies  under  the  cir 
cumference  of  my  hat  .  .  .  and  should  I 
by  misfortune  come  to  lose  my  head,  I 
should  not  be  worth  a  groat."  "  I  am 
seldom  troubled  by  what  the  world  calls 
airs  and  caprices,  and  I  think  it  an  idiot's 
excuse  for  a  foolish  action  to  say :  '  Twas 
my  humor.' "  "  I  cannot  cheerfully  fix 


to  any  study  which  bears  not  a  pleasure 
in  the  application."  "  Long  expectation 
makes  the  blessing  always  less  to  me ;  I 
lose  the  great  transport  of  surprise."  "  I 
am  a  very  great  epicure ;  for  which  rea 
son  I  hate  all  pleasure  that's  purchased 
by  excess  of  pain.  I  can't  relish  the  jest 
that  vexes  another.  In  short,  if  ever  I 
do  a  wilful  injury,  it  must  be  a  very  great 
one."  "  I  have  many  acquaintances,  very 
few  intimates,  but  no  friend  ;  I  mean,  in 
the  old  romantic  way."  "  I  have  no  se 
cret  so  weighty  but  that  I  can  bear  it  in 
my  own  breast."  "  I  would  have  my  pas 
sion,  if  not  led,  at  least  waited  on  by  my 
reason."  This  last  text,  repeated  else 
where  by  Farquhar,  which  is  the  counter 
part  of  one  in  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  Arca 
dia,  has  interest  from  the  lips  of  a  child 
of  the  "dancing,  drinking,  and  unthink 
ing  time."  Farquhar's  face,  in  the  old 
prints,  is  wonderfully  of  a  piece  with 
these  amiable  reports  :  a  handsome,  hu 
mane,  careworn,  melancholy  young  face, 
the  negation  of  the  contemporary  idea  of 
the  man  about  town.  His  constitution, 
at  its  best,  was  but  frail.  "You  are  as 


J48 


dear  to  me,"  he  says,  pathetically,  to  his 
Penelope,  "as  my  hopes  of  waking  in 
health  to-morrow  morning." 

A  tradition  has  been  received  without 
question  by  his  many  critics  and  biogra 
phers,  that  his  chief  characters,  all  cast  in 
the  same  animated  mould,  are  but  incog 
nitos  of  himself.  Highly -colored  pro 
jections  of  himself,  with  latent  traits  ex 
aggerated,  and  formed  mental  restraints 
removed,  they  may  indeed  be.  The  pub 
lic,  which  loves  identifications,  insisted 
on  finding  him  revealed  in  his  Archers 
and  Sir  Harrys.  Whether  or  not  the 
dramatists  of  the  day  had  universally  the 
Rembrandtesque  whim  of  painting  them 
selves  into  their  own  foregrounds,  they 
were  obstinately  supposed  to  do  so,  with 
Etherege  in  Young  Bellair,  with  Otway 
in  Jaffier.  But  the  real  Farquhar 

— "courteous,  facile,  sweet, 
Hating  that  solemn  vice  of  greatness,  pride," 

with  his  reserve,  his  simple  dress,  his  thin, 
agreeable  voice,  his  early  reputation  at 
college  for  uncongeniality,  acting  in  every 
emergency  whither  we  can  fairly  trace 


him  with  deliberate  high-mindedness,  is 
far  enough  from  the  temper  of  his  rest 
less  and  jocund  creations.  He  wished 
to  remove  the  impression  that  he  could 
have  been  his  own  model  ;  for  he  took 
pains  to  inscribe  The  Inconstant  to  his 
classmate,  Richard  Tighe,  and  to  com 
pliment  him  upon  his  kinship  with  Mira 
bel,  "a  gay,  splendid,  easy,  generous, 
fine  young  gentleman  ";  the  applauded 
type,  in  short,  of  all  that  Farquhar's 
heroes  set  out  to  be.  Again,  lest  he 
should  pass  for  a  realist  as  rabid  as 
Mademoiselle  de  Scudery,  who  pinioned 
three  hundred  and  seventy  of  her  ac 
quaintances  between  the  covers  of  Clelie, 
Farquhar  adds  this  warning  to  his  en 
thusiastic  dedication  of  The  Recruiting 
Officer  "  to  all  friends  round  the  Wrekin  ": 
"  Some  little  turns  of  humor  that  I  met 
with  almost  within  the  shade  of  that  fa 
mous  hill  gave  the  rise  to  this  comedy  ; 
and  people  were  apprehensive  that,  by 
the  example  of  some  others,  I  would 
make  the  town  merry  at  the  expense  of 
the  country  gentleman.  But  they  forgot 
that  I  was  to  write  a  comedy,  not  a  libel." 


1 5o 


He  disclaims  everywhere,  with  the  same 
playful  decisiveness,  the  interpretations 
put  upon  his  designs  and  actions  by  the 
world  of  overgrown  infants  which  he  en 
tertained.  Endowed  with  courage  and 
much  personal  charm,  he  had  small  chance 
of  distinguishing  himself  upon  the  field, 
and  for  the  most  part  shone  at  a  garri 
son  mess  ;  but  he  had  led  a  not  inadvent- 
urous  life,  in  which  were  incidents  of 
the  most  pronounced  melodrama,  with  a 
touch  of  mystery  to  enhance  their  value 
for  the  curious.  Farquhar  had  travelled, 
and  with  an  open,  not  an  insular  mind  ; 
he  had,  by  his  own  confession,  too  deep 
an  acquaintance  with  wine,  and  with  the 
nightingales  of  Spring  Gardens,  outsing- 
ing  "  the  chimes  at  midnight,  Master 
Shallow  ";  he  had  been,  in  short,  though 
with  "  melancholy  as  his  every-day  ap 
parel,"  alive  and  abroad  as  a  private  Whig 
of  the  Revolution,  shy  of  ladies'  notice 
till  it  came,  and  proud  of  it  ever  after. 
When  he  printed,  in  his  twenty-first  year, 
The  Adventures  of  Covent  Garden,  he 
added  to  it  a  boy's  bragging  motto :  Et 
quorum  pars  magna  fui.  The  inference 


seems  to  have  clung  closer  to  him  than 
he  found  comfortable.  He  complains, 
not  without  significance,  in  his  prose 
essay  upon  the  drama,  that  the  public 
think  any  role  compounded  of  "  practical 
rake  and  speculative  gentleman  is,  ten  to 
one,  the  author's  own  character."  With 
the  incident  which  furnished  its  thrilling 
closing  scenes  to  The  Inconstant,  Far- 
quhar  had  probably  no  connection ;  he 
takes  pains  to  state  that  the  hero  of  it 
was  the  Chevalier  de  Chastillon,  quite  as 
if  he  feared  another  confusion  of  himself, 
as  fearless  and  quick-witted  a  man,  with 
the  "golden  swashbucklers"  of  his  imag 
ination.  The  rumor  which  confounded 
them  with  him  has  next  to  nothing  to 
support  it.  Fortune,  fashion,  foolhardi- 
ness,  impudence,  were  not  the  stars  which 
shone  upon  Farquhar's  nativity.  Such 
exotic  and  epic  virtues  as  may  flourish 
under  these,  such  as  do  adorn  the  delight 
ful  dandies  he  depicted,  surely  belonged 
to  him  in  person  ;  and  his  quiet  habit  of 
living  apart  and  letting  the  town  talk, 
fixed  to  perpetuity  the  belief  that  he  had 
exploited  himself  vicariously,  for  good 


"52 


and  all,  upon  the  stage.  Certain  quali 
ties  of  his,  certain  brave  truces  established 
with  adverse  conditions,  force  one  to  con 
sider  him  with  more  attention  and  re 
spect  than  even  his  brilliant  pen  invites. 
It  is  something  to  find  him  diffident  and 
studious  in  a  bacchanalian  society,  and 
with  such  scrupulous  sensitiveness  that  a 
mere  inadvertence  in  boyhood  forbade 
him  ever  to  fence  again  ;  *  but  his  out 
standing  characteristic,  the  thing  which 
sets  him  apart  from  his  brocaded  dramatis 
persona,  is  his  known  lasting  devotion  to 
the  welfare  of  his  family,  and  his  admira 
ble  behavior  in  relation  to  his  early  and 
extraordinary  marriage. 

In  1702,  Farquhar  issued  a  charming 
and  little-known  miscellany,  called  Love 
and  Business,  "  a  collection  of  occasionary 
verse  and  epistolary  prose."  The  poetic 

*  Dear  Dick  Steele,  in  1701,  while  Captain  of  Fusi- 
leers,  had  a  duel  thrust  upon  him  ;  and  in  parrying,  his 
sword  pierced  his  man.  To  his  remorse  may  be  ascribed 
his  hatred  of  the  custom  of  duelling,  expressed  afterwards 
on  every  occasion.  Steele  owed  his  start  in  life  to  James 
Butler,  Duke  of  Ormonde,  who  entered  him  among  the 
boys  on  the  Charterhouse  foundation.  This  peer  was 
grandfather  to  the  man  who  failed  George  Farquhar. 


153 


exercises  are  of  small  importance ;  but 
the  other  data  (which  survive  as  a  hin 
drance,  rather  than  as  a  help,  to  biogra 
phers)  come  near  being  of  very  definite 
value.  All  manner  of  futile  guesses  have 
been  expended  upon  the  identification  of 
his  Penelope.  It  is  given  to  no  mouser 
to  name  her  with  certainty  ;  but,  despite 
the  gossip  of  the  greenroom,  now  as  ever 
too  ready  to  weave  romances  about  the 
name  of  George  Farquhar,  internal  evi 
dence  is  strongly  against  her  having  been 
Anne  Oldfield.  Yet  this  is  the  supposi 
tion  of  most  of  his  editors.  Com  menting 
upon  one  passage  touching  some  villanous 
stratagem  from  which  Farquhar  says  he 
was  able  to  rescue  a  friend  in  the  Low 
Countries,  a  friend  with  whom  he  after 
wards  condoles  upon  a  robbery  she  had 
undergone,  Leigh  Hunt  adds  that  this  may 
have  been  the  woman  whom  Farquhar 
subsequently  made  his  wife.  A  widow, 
whose  Christian  name  was  Margaret,  but 
of  whom  we  know  so  little  else  that  we 
cannot  say  whether  she  was  English,  or 
whether  her  age  considerably  exceeded 
his,  conceived  a  passionate  attachment  for 


him,  and  managed  to  have  it  represented 
to  him  from  several  quarters  not  only 
that  she  was  kindly  disposed  towards  him, 
but  that  it  would  be  well  for  his  opening 
career  if  he  should  seek  her  hand,  as  she 
had  estates  and  revenues.  Eventually, 
after  we  know  not  what  hesitations  nat 
ural  to  a  fastidious  temperament,  he  pro 
posed  to  her  and  was  accepted,  and  it 
soon  transpired  that  the  bride  was  quite 
as  penniless  as  himself.  Hunt  does  not 
follow  out  his  own  hint  in  the  matter  of 
the  robbery,  though  the  question,  when 
carefully  considered,  has  a  vital  import. 
If  the  victim  were  indeed  the  lady  whom 
Farquhar  married  later,  and  if  she  were 
indeed  robbed,  it  should  signify  that  she 
must  then  have  been  possessed  of  some 
wealth,  so  that  the  report  given  to  Far 
quhar  could  not  have  been,  up  to  that 
time  at  least,  a  lie.  On  the  other  hand, 
casuists  must  decide  whether,  again  in 
the  event  of  the  victim  having  been  cor 
rectly  identified  by  Hunt,  the  robbery 
itself  may  not  have  been  an  invention 
meant,  after  Farquhar  had  declared  his 
allegiance,  to  quicken  his  sympathy,  and 


to  soften  the  coming  revelation  that  the 
robbery  could  never  have  resulted,  owing 
to  a  defect  in  the  premises  !  There  is 
very  much  else  about  the  Letters  which 
is  confusing  and  inconsistent.  They  are 
so  disconnected,  and  they  vary  so  in 
tone  and  manner,  as  to  suggest  a  doubt 
whether,  if  not  altogether  imaginary,  they 
could  have  been  meant  for  any  one  per 
son.  A  lady  is  announced  as  having  re 
turned  them  for  publication  ;  she  dresses 
in  mourning,  and  resides  now  on  the 
Continent,  now  in  London  or  in  the 
country;  her  suitor  very  explicitly  states 
that  he  had  long  solicited  in  vain  the 
honor  of  her  hand  ;  and,  in  the  end,  with 
farewells  and  an  abrupt  and  unexplained 
severing,  he  gives  up  the  quest,  with  his 
own  admission  that  he  has  lost  her  and 
that  her  heart  "  had  no  room  for  him." 
Now  that  the  recipient  of  this  corre 
spondence,  Anne  Oldfield  or  another, 
should  have  returned  it  for  commercial 
purposes,  not  having  been  won  by  the 
very  real  passion  exhibited  in  parts  of  it, 
seems  somewhat  peculiar ;  but  to  accept 
as  fact  that  Farquhar  himself  actually 


•  56 


asked  these  letters  back  from  her,  and 
printed  them  as  they  stood,  is,  under  the 
conditions,  absurd,  and  irreconcilable  with 
our  knowledge  of  his  character  from  other 
and  prior  sources.  Hunt  further  suggests 
that  the  Miscellany  was  gathered  togeth 
er  in  some  press  of  pecuniary  trouble; 
and  its  title,  indeed,  may  hint  at  a  whim 
sical  expectation  that  Love,  being  har 
nessed  and  sent  abroad  to  arouse  curiosi 
ty  among  readers,  may  return  in  the  way 
of  Business  to  headquarters.  But  Far- 
quhar,  in  his  bachelor  days,  had  a  fair  in 
come,  and  would  not  have  been  so  likely 
to  hear  the  wolf  at  the  door  as  he  was 
later,  when  that  sound  would  awake  in 
him  a  dread  not  ominous  to  himself  alone. 
It  is  possible  that  the  undiscovered  reg 
ister  of  his  marriage  bears  the  date  of 
1702  or  even  of  1701  ;  if  it  were  so,  that 
might  explain  the  issue  of  his  only  book 
not  in  dramatic  dress,  and  the  emergency 
which  called  it  forth.  It  is  difficult  in 
deed  to  suppose,  although  modern  deli 
cacy  in  these  matters  was  just  then  a 
somewhat  unknown  quantity,  that  we 
have  between  its  covers  genuine  love-let- 


ters  hot  from  the  pen.  Steele,  of  an  Au 
gust  morning  nine  years  later,  inserted  in 
The  Spectator  as  the  communication  of  a 
third  person,  six  of  his  own  notes  to  his 
comely  and  noble  fiance'e,  Mary  Scur- 
lock.  But  Farquhar  had  not  Steele's 
earnestness  and  love  of  circumstantial 
truth,  nor  his  zest  for  pointing  a  moral. 
Or  was  this  publication  the  sort  of  thing 
he  would  be  likely,  for  a  not  unworthy 
purpose,  to  do?  Was  he,  in  reality,  a 
shade  more  obtuse  and  misguided  than 
Miss  Fanny  Brawne?  Rather  let  us  be 
lieve  the  Letters  a  work  of  fiction,  and 
only  founded  largely  upon  various  by 
gone  moods  and  incidents  of  the  fore 
going  two  years,  which  for  one  reason 
or  another  might  interest  buyers.  Such 
is  the  description  to  "  dear  Sam  "  of  Dry- 
den's  erratic  funeral,  which  is  almost 
too  keenly  rhetorical  a  summing-up  to 
have  been  written  the  next  day,  or  the 
thoughtful  and  sensible  surveys  of  the 
Dutch.  The  amatory  epistles,  with  their 
leaven  of  reality,  are  presumably  edited 
out  of  all  recognition.  They  make  no 
denned  impression ;  they  do  not  move 


'58 


forward  ;  they  veil  impenetrably  the  traits 
of  the  person  addressed,  who  is  made  to 
appear  as  a  vanishing  unrelentinggoddess, 
deaf  and  blind  to  George  Farquhar  plead 
ing  his  best.  Whatever  were  the  facts, 
the  report  of  them  is  chivalrous.  As 
sume  for  a  moment  that  his  wife  stands 
behind  the  whole  of  this  correspondence, 
or  even  behind  the  latter  part  of  it,  and 
what  seemed  to  constitute  a  little  betray 
al  in  the  very  worst  taste  turns  out  to  be 
an  innocent  joke.  Of  course  the  "  lady  " 
(or  one  of  the  ladies)  lent  the  manuscripts 
to  the  printers  ;  of  course  Farquhar  orig 
inated,  in  order  to  give  color  to  Mistress 
Farquhar's  known  pretence  of  riches,  and 
their  joint  subsequent  poverty,  the  mag 
nificent  thieving  practised  upon  the  nev 
er-thieved  and  the  unthievable !  One 
can  fancy  them  both,  in  their  hard  chairs 
in  the  bare  room,  laughing  well  and  long, 
between  tears  of  anxious  hope  that  the 
more  personal  element  in  the  Miscellany 
might  fetch  them  from  the  Covent  Gar 
den  book-stalls  a  parcel  of  fagots  and  a 
dinner. 

Aside  from  all  theorizing,  it  is  pleas- 


159 


ant  to  know  that  their  life  together  was 
a  happy  one.  The  consensus  of  all  wit 
nesses,  in  the  significant  absence  of  any 
contrary  voice,  affirms  that  Farquhar, 
having  been  trapped,  bore  himself  like 
the  gentleman  he  was.  Two  children 
were  born  to  him,  to  brighten,  but  also  to 
sadden,  his  brief  and  diligent  life.  Under 
his  added  anxieties  he  did  his  royal  best ; 
he  addressed  to  their  mother,  from  first 
to  last,  no  word  of  reproach  for  her  fraud. 

"  The  secret  pleasure  of  the  generous  act 
Is  the  great  mind's  great  bribe." 

In  its  fragrance  of  faith  and  patience  and 
self-sacrificing  tenderness,  their  domestic 
story  can  almost  rank  next  after  that  sa 
cred  one  of  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb. 

Farquhar's  widow,  who  had  loved  him, 
appears  to  have  loved  his  memory.*    She 

*  Mrs.  Farquhar  published  in  1711  an  octavo  volume 
of  the  Plays,  Letters,  and  Verses.  Among  the  verses  fig 
ures  a  poem  of  six  cantos  dedicated  to  the  victorious  Earl  of 
Peterborough,  entitled  Barcelona.  "  It  was  found  among 
my  dear  deceased  husband's  writings,"  says  the  widow, 
in  her  prefatory  note.  He  was  not  at  the  siege,  and  it 
is  possible  that  the  six  cantos  were  a  manuscript  copy 
of  the  effusion  of  some  former  comrade.  Farquhar  was 


i6o 


did  not  survive  her  husband  many  years  ; 
for  there  is  reason  to  suppose  she  died 
before  1719,  and  in  penury.  Poor  Far- 
quhar  used  to  declare  that  the  dread  that 
his  family  might  suffer  want  was  far  more 
bitter  to  him  than  death.  Wilkes  gave 
at  his  theatre,  in  the  May  of  1708,  a  bene 
fit  for  Margaret  Farquhar,  and  twelve 
years  later  he  was  acting  as  trustee  for 
the  young  girls  Mary  and  Anne  Marga 
ret,  whose  pension  is  said  by  the  Encyclo 
pedia  Britanntca  to  have  amounted  to 
thirty  pounds;  it  was  obtained  through 
the  exertions  of  Edmund  Challoner,  to 
whom  their  father  had  dedicated  his  Mis 
cellanies.  Wilkes  seems  to  have  again 
aided  both  the  orphans  when  they  came 
of  age.  One  of  them  married  an  humble 
tradesman,  and  died  early  ;  the  other  was 
living  in  1764,  wholly  uneducated,  and,  as 
it  is  said  on  small  authority,  as  a  maid- 


the  author  of  several  songs,  one,  of  highly  didactic  com 
plexion,  having  emanated  from  him  at  the  reputed  age  of 
ten.  Of  these,  only  two  are  of  fair  lyrical  quality  :  the 
page's  song  in  Love  and  a  Bottle,  and  "  Tell  me,  Aurelia, 
tell  me,  pray,"  which  Robert  Southey  included  in  his 
collection. 


servant.  Farquhar's  elder  biographers 
and  editors,  Ware,  Genest,  Chetwood,  and 
the  rest,  writing  in  this  daughter's  life 
time,  were  apparently  unconscious  of  her 
existence  ;  but  the  thought  of  her  father's 
child,  old,  neglected,  and  in  a  menial  po 
sition,  served  to  anger  Leigh  Hunt  as 
late  as  1842. 

Fear  and  forecast  of  what  is  only  too 
likely  to  befall  the  helpless,  depressed 
Farquhar  in  the  April  long  ago,  when  he 
lay  dying  of  consumption,  and  when, 
with  a  fortitude  which  sustained  him 
under  his  bitter  disappointment,  for  six 
weeks,  he  wrote  and  finished  his  masterly 
comedy  The  Beaux1  Stratagem.  As  he 
drew  near  the  end  of  the  second  act  he 
was  told  to  give  up  hope ;  but  the  sec 
ond  act  closes  with  the  famous  rattling 
catechism  between  Cherry  and  Archer, 
and  the  best  bit  of  verse  its  author  ever 
made ;  and  the  third  starts  in  with  the 
hearty  sweet  laugh  —  Anne  Oldfield's 
laugh— of  that  "  exquisite  creature,  Mrs. 
Sullen."  On  a  fund  of  grief,  Farquhar 
enriched  his  London  with  a  legacy  of 
perpetual  merriment.  The  unflagging 


If,2 


impetus  of  his  dramas,  above  and  beyond 
their  very  real  intrinsic  merit,  accounts 
for  their  great  and  yet  unforfeited  pop 
ularity.  They  descend  to  us  associated 
with  the  intellectual  triumphs  of  the 
most  dear  and  dazzling  names  upon  the 
English  stage ;  they  move  upon  the 
wings  of  intelligence  and  good -nature; 
they  "give  delight,  and  hurt  not."  They 
swarm  with  soldiers,  welcome  figures 
long  tacitly  prohibited  from  the  boards, 
as  too  painful  a  reminder  of  the  Civil 
Wars.  They  begin  with  the  clatter  of 
spurs,  the  bang  of  doors,  the  hubbub 
of  bantering  voices  in  "  a  broadside  of 
damme's."  Sergeant  Kite  appears,  fol 
lowed  by  a  mob  on  whom  he  lavishes 
his  wheedling,  inspiriting  gibble-gabble ; 
Roebuck  enters  in  fantastic  colloquy 
with  a  beggar ;  Sir  Harry  crosses  the 
road,  singing,  with  footmen  after  him, 
and  Vizard  meanwhile  indicating  him  to 
Standard  as  "the  joy  of  the  playhouse 
and  the  life  of  the  park,  Sir  Harry  Wild- 
air,  newly  come  from  Paris  " ;  The  Twin 
Rivals  opens  in  a  volley  of  epigrams; 
the  rise  of  the  curtain  in  The  Beaux' 


1 63 


Stratagem  discloses  sly  old  Boniface  and 
the  ingenious  Cherry  calling  and  run 
ning,  running  and  calling,  in  a  fluster 
pregnant  of  farce  and  revel.  Farquhar's 
pages  are  not  for  the  closet ;  they  have 
little  passive  charm  ;  to  quote  from  them, 
full  as  they  are  of  familiar  saws  almost 
all  his  own,  is  hardly  fair.  His  mother- 
wit  arises  from  the  ludicrous  and  unfore 
seen  predicament,  not  from  vanity  and 
conscious  power ;  it  is  integral,  not  mere 
repartee ;  and  it  never  calls  a  halt  to  the 
action.  As  was  well  said  by  Charles 
Cowden  Clarke,  "  there  are  no  traps  for 
jests"  in  Farquhar;  "no  trains  laid  to 
fire  equivoque:'  The  clear  fun,  spurt 
ing  unannounced  in  dialogue  after  di 
alogue,  in  incident  after  incident ;  the 
incessant  Moliere-like  masquerades;  the 
thousand  little  issues  depending  upon 
by -play  and  transient  inspiration;  the 
narrowing  scope  and  deepening  senti 
ment  of  the  plot,  like  a  secret  given  to 
the  players,  to  be  told  fully  only  to  the 
audience  most  in  touch  with  them — these 
commend  Farquhar's  vivacious  roles  to 
actors,  and  make  them  both  difficult 


1 64 


and  desirable.  With  what  unction,  from 
an  actor's  lips,  falls  his  manifold  and 
glowing  praise  of  theatres !  What  a  pret 
ty  picture,  a  broad  wash  of  rose  -  purple 
and  white,  he  can  make  of  the  interior 
seen  from  the  wings !  "  There's  such  a 
hurry  of  pleasure  to  transport  us ;  the 
bustle,  noise,  gallantry,  equipage,  garters, 
feathers,  wigs,  bows,  smiles,  ogles,  love, 
music,  and  applause !"  And  again,  in 
another  mood  :  "  The  playhouse  is  the 
element  of  poetry,  because  the  region  of 
beauty  ;  the  ladies,  methinks,  have  a  more 
inspiring,  triumphant  air  in  the  boxes 
than  anywhere  else.  They  sit  command 
ing  on  their  thrones,  with  all  their  sub 
ject  slaves  about  them  ;  their  best  clothes, 
best  looks  ;  shining  jewels,  sparkling  eyes  ; 
the  treasures  of  the  w'orld  in  a  ring." 
And  Mirabel,  who  is  speaking,  ends  with 
an  ecstatic  sigh  :  "  I  could  wish  that  my 
whole  life  long  were  the  first  night  of  a 
new  play !" 

This  is  a  drop,  or  a  rise,  from  Congreve 
and  his  aristocratic  abstractions.  Far- 
quhar,  in  his  youth,  had  modelled  him 
self  chiefly  upon  the  comedy  of  Con- 


greve,  and  may  be  said  to  have  perfected 
the  mechanism  which  the  genius  of  Con- 
greve  had  brought  into  vogue.  He  nev 
er  attained,  nor  could  attain,  Congreve's 
scholarly  elegance  of  proportion  and  his 
consummate  diction.  But  he  had  the 
happiness  of  being  no  purely  literary 
dramatist;  he  had  technical  knowledge 
and  skill.  He  brought  the  existing  he 
roes  with  their  conniving  valets,  the 
buxom  equivocal  maids,  the  laughing, 
masking,  conscienceless  fine  ladies,  out 
of  their  disreputable  moonlight  into 
healthful  comic  air ;  and  added  to  them, 
in  the  transfer,  a  leaven  of  homely  lova- 
bleness  which  will  forever  keep  his  mas 
terpieces  upon  the  stage. 

Farquhar's  original  intellect  has  a  value 
only  relative;  he  may  be  considered  as 
Goldsmith's  tutor  rather  than  as  Con 
greve's  disciple.  Goldsmith  had  no  small 
knowledge  of  Farquhar,  his  forerunner  by 
sixty  years  as  a  sizar  student  of  Trinity; 
and,  like  him,  he  is  reported  to  have  been 
dropped  from  his  class  for  a  buffoonery. 
What  friends  (Arcades  ambo,  in  both  Vir- 
gilian  and  blameless  Byronese)  might  . 


these  two  parsons'  sons  have  been  !  Scrub, 
Squire  Sullen's  servant,  in  The  Beaux' 
Stratagem,  who  "  on  Saturday  draws  war 
rants,  and  on  Sunday  draws  beer,"  was  a 
part  Goldy  once  greatly  desired  to  act. 
He,  too,  when  he  came  to  write  plays, 
cast  about  for  conventional  types  to  han 
dle  and  improve.  Tony  and  his  incom 
parable  mother  would  hardly  have  been, 
without  their  first  imperfect  apparition 
in  Wycherley's  powerful  (and  stolen) 
Plain  Dealer ;  and  Young  Marlow  and 
Hastings  are  frank  reproductions  of 
Archer  and  Aimwell,  in  a  much  finer 
situation.  Miss  Hardcastle  hopes  that  in 
her  cap  and  apron  she  may  resemble 
Cherry.  And  no  one  seems  to  have 
traced  a  celebrated  passage  in  The  Vicar 
of  Wakefield  either  to  my  Lady  Howdye's 
message  to  my  Lady  Allnight  repeated 
by  Archer  (who  in  this  same  scene  in 
troduces  the  "topical  song"  upon  the 
modern  boards),  or  else  to  the  example 
of  the  manoeuvring  Bisarre  in  Act  II., 
Scene  I.,  of  The  Inconstant.  Surely, 
"forms  which  proceed  from  simple 
enumeration  and  are  exposed  to  validity 


i67 


from  a  contradictory  instance  "  supplies 
the  unique  original  of  the  nonsense- 
rhetoric  which  so  confounded  poor  Mo 
ses.*  The  talk  of  Clincher  Junior  and 
Tim,  of  Kite,  Bullock,  Scrub,  Lyric,  and 
the  unbaptized  wench  Parly,  of  the  con 
stable  showing  the  big  bed  to  Hermes 
Wouldbe,  the  talk,  that  is,  of  Farquhar's 
common  people;  shows  humor  altogeth 
er  of  what  we  may  call  the  Goldsmith 
order :  genial,  odd,  grotesque  paradox, 
springing  from  Irish  inconsequence  and 
love  of  human  kind. 

In  the  sixth  year  of  Queen  Anne,  when 
Farquhar  died,  Steele  was  married  to  his 
"  Prue,"  and  having  seen  the  last  of  his 
three  reformatory  dramas  "damned  for 
its  piety,"  sought  Joseph  Addison's  ap 
proval  and  collaboration,  and  fell  to  de 
signing  The  Tatler.  Fielding  was  new 
born,  Johnson  just  out  of  the  cradle, 


*  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield  dates  from  1766.  Almost 
twenty  years  before  that,  the  immortal  Partridge  had  re 
marked  to  Tom  Jones,  quoting  his  schoolmaster:  "  Polly 
matete  cry  town  is  my  daskalon."  Noble  nonsense  hath 
her  pedigree.  Goldsmith,  however,  is  not  so  likely  to 
have  taken  his  cue  from  Fielding. 


,68 


Pope  was  trying  a  cunning  young  hand 
at  his  first  Pastorals ;  Defoe,  an  alumnus 
of  Newgate,  was  beating  his  way  outward 
and  upward  ;  Swift,  yet  a  Whig,  was  known 
but  for  his  Tale  of  a  Tub.  The  fresh  wa 
ters  were  rising  on  all  sides  to  vivify  the 
sick  lowlands  of  the  decadence.  The 
kingdoms  had  a  forgotten  lesson,  and 
long  in  the  learning,  set  before  them  : 
to  regain,  as  a  basis  for  legitimate  re 
sults,  their  mental  independence  and  sim 
plicity  ;  to  serve  art  for  art's  sake,  and  to 
achieve,  through  the  reactionary  formal 
ism  of  the  nascent  eighteenth  century, 
freedom  and  a  broad  ethic  outlook.  It 
was  as  if  Comedy,  in  her  winning  mere 
tricious  perfections,  had  to  die,  that  Eng 
lish  prose  might  live.  It  is  enough  for 
an  immature  genius  of  the  third  order, 
born  under  Charles  the  Second,  to  have 
vaguely  foreshadowed  a  just  and  imper 
ative  change.  Farquhar  certainly  does 
foreshadow  it,  albeit  with  what  theologi 
ans  might  call  absence  of  the  necessary 
intention. 

He  wrote  excellent  prefaces  and  pro 
logues.     His  Discourse  upon  Comedy,  in 


the  Miscellanies,  did  pioneer  work  for  his 
theory,  since  expounded  by  more  author 
itative  critics,  and  received  by  the  Eng 
lish  world,  that  the  observance  or  non- 
observance  of  the  dramatic  unities  is  at 
the  will  of  the  wise,  and  that  for  guid 
ance  in  all  such  matters  playwrights 
should  look  to  Shakespeare  rather  than 
to  Aristotle.  The  Discourse,  in  Far- 
quhar's  clear,  sunny,  homespun,  forceful 
style,  does  him  honor,  and  should  be  re 
printed.  His  best  charm  is  that  he  can 
not  be  didactic.  His  suasion  is  of  the 
strongest,  but  he  has  the  self-conscious 
ness  of  all  sensitive  and  analytic  minds, 
which  keeps  him  free  here  as  elsewhere 
from  the  slightest  assumption  of  despot 
ism.  It  is  very  refreshing,  in  the  face  of 
that  incessant  belaboring  of  the  reader 
which  Lesage  was  setting  as  a  contem 
poraneous  fashion,  to  come  across  Far- 
quhar's  gentle  good-humored  salutatory  : 
"  If  you  like  the  author's  book,  you  have 
all  the  sense  he  thought  you  had  ;  if  you 
dislike  it,  you  have  more  sense  than  he 
was  aware  of!"  Had  he  lived  longer,  or 
a  little  later,  we  should  have  found  him 


170 


as  well,  with  his  turn  for  skirmishing 
psychology,  among  the  essayists  and  the 
novelists.  There  were  in  him  a  mellow 
ness  and  an  unction  which  have  their  full 
est  play  in  professedly  subjective  writing. 
Farquhar,  after  all,  did  not  fulfil  himself, 
for  he  followed  an  ill  outgoing  fashion 
in  aesthetics  rather  than  further  a  right 
incoming  one.  No  one  can  help  be 
grudging  him  to  the  period  he  adorned. 
He  deserved  to  flourish  on  the  manlier 
morrow,  and  to  hold  a  historic  position 
with  the  regenerators  of  public  taste  in 
England.  "  Ah,  go  hang  thyself  up,  my 
brave  Crillon,  for  at  Arques  we  had  a 
fight,  and  thou  wert  NOT  in  it !"  One 
can  fancy  Sir  Richard  Steele  forever 
quoting  that  at  Captain  George  Far 
quhar,  in  some  roomy  club -window  in 
Paradise. 


IV 

TOPHAM    BEAUCLERK 

1739-1780 

-     AND  ^ 

BENNET   LANGTON 

1741-1800 


TOPHAM    BEAUCLERK    AND 
BENNET   LANGTON 


Samuel  Johnson's  famous 
circle  nearly  every  man 
stands  for  himself,  full  of 
definite  purpose  and  power. 
But  two  young  men  are 
there  who  did  nothing  of  moment,  whose 
names  chime  often  down  the  pages  of  all 
his  biographies,  and  to  whom  the  world 
must  pay  honor,  if  only  for  the  friendship 
they  took  and  gave.  As  Apollo  should 
be  set  about  with  his  Graces  "  tripping 
neatly,"  so  the  portentous  old  apparition 
of  Johnson  seems  never  so  complete  and 
endearing  as  when  attended  by  these 
two  above  all  things  else  Johnsonians. 
When  the  Turk's  Head  is  ajar  in  Gerrard 
Street,  in  shadow  -  London ;  when  the 
"  unclubable  "  Hawkins  strides  over  the 
threshold,  and  Hogarth  goes  by  the  win- 


174 


dow  with  his  large  nod  and  smile ;  when 
Chamier  is  there  reading,  Goldsmith  pos 
ing  in  purple  silk  small-clothes,  Sir  Joshua 
fingering  his  trumpet,  Burke  and  little 
brisk  Garrick  stirring  "bishop"*  in  their 
glasses,  and  the  king  of  the  hour,  distin 
guished  by  his  lack  of  ruffles,  is  rolling 
about  in  his  chair  of  state,  saying  some 
thing  prodigiously  humorous  and  wise, 
it  is  still  Bennet  Langton  and  Topham 
Beauclerk  who  most  give  the  scene  its 
human  genial  lustre,  standing  with  laugh 
ter  behind  him,  arm  in  arm.  They  were 
his  favorites,  and  it  is  the  most  adorable 
thing  about  them  both  that  they  made 
out  to  like  James  Boswell,  who  was  jeal 
ous  of  them.  (Perhaps  they  had  appre 
hended  thoroughly  Newman's  fine  apho 
rism  concerning  a  bore:  "You  may  yield, 
or  you  may  flee  :  you  cannot  conquer !") 
The  rare  glimpses  we  have  of  their  broth 
erly  lives  is  through  the  door  which  opens 
or  shuts  for  Johnson.  Between  him  and 
them  was  deep  and  enduring  affection, 


*  A  popular  eighteenth  century  beverage,  composed  of 
wine,  orange,  and  sugar. 


and  what  little  is  known  of  them  has  a 
right  to  be  more,  for  his  sake. 

Bennet  Langton,  born  in  1741  in  the 
very  neighborhood  famous  now  as  the 
birthplace  of  Tennyson,  was  the  elder  son 
of  the  odd  and  long -descended  George 
Langton  of  Langton,  and  of  Diana  his 
wife,  daughter  of  Edmund  Turnor,  Es 
quire,  of  Stoke  Rochford,  Lincolnshire. 
While  a  lad  in  the  fen-country,  he  read 
The  Rambler,  and  conceived  the  purest 
enthusiasm  for  its  author.  He  came  to 
London,  indeed,  on  the  ideal  errand  of 
seeking  him  out,  and,  thanks  to  the  kind 
apothecary  Levett,  found  the  idol  of  his 
imagination  at  home  at  No.  17  Gough 
Square,  Fleet  Street.  Despite  the  some 
what  staggering  circumstances  of  John 
son's  attire, —  for  the  serious  boy  had 
rashly  presupposed  a  stately,  fastidious, 
and  well-mannered  figure, —  he  paid  his 
vows,  and  commended  himself  to  his 
new  friend  for  once  and  all.  Langton 
entered  Trinity  College,  Oxford,  in  1757, 
at  the  age  of  sixteen.*  The  Doctor,  who 

*  Although  Langton  is  recorded  on  his  college  books 
as  having  given  the  usual  £10  for  plate,  and  also  as 


i76 


had  known  him  about  three  years,  fol 
lowed  his  career  at  the  university  with 
interest,  writing  to  Langton's  tutor,  then 
"dear  Tom  Warton,"  just  appointed  to 
the  professorship  of  poetry  held  by  his 
father,  and  afterwards  poet-laureate  :  "  I 
see  your  pupil :  his  mind  is  as  exalted 
as  his  stature,"  and  to  Langton's  self  the 
sweet  generality :  "  I  love,  dear  sir,  to 
think  of  you."  He  even  paid  his  Fresh 
man  a  visit,  and  swam  sportively  across 
a  dangerous  pool  in  the  Isis,  in  the  teeth 
of  his  warning;  and  here  also,  in  the  Ox 
ford  which  was  long  ago  his  own  "  tent 
of  a  night,"  he  fell  across  a  part  of  his 
destiny  in  the  shape  of  that  strange 
bird,  Mr.  Topham  Beauclerk,  then  a  tak 
ing  scapegrace  of  eighteen.  The  Doctor 
must  have  shaken  his  head  at  first,  and 
wondered  at  the  juxtaposition  of  this 
arrant  Lord  of  Misrule  and  the  "  evan- 


having  paid  his  caution  money  in  1757,  his  name  is 
not  down  upon  the  matriculation  lists,  possibly  because 
he  failed  to  appear  at  the  moment  the  entries  were  being 
made.  In  what  must  have  been  his  destined  space  upon 
one  of  the  pages,  Dr.  Ingram  made  this  note  :  "  Q.  Num 
Bennet  Langton  hie  inserendus  ?" 


gelical  goodness  "  of  his  admirable  Lang- 
ton,  until  mollified  by  the  knowledge 
that  a  species  of  cult  for  himself'  and 
ardent  perusal  of  his  writings,  had  first 
brought  them  together.  It  was  a  pleas 
ant  thought  to  him,  that  of  the  two  young 
ribboned  heads  high  in  the  quadrangle, 
bending  for  the  ninth  time  over  The 
Reasons  Why  Advice  is  Generally  Inef 
fectual,  The  Mischief  of  Unbotmded  Rail 
lery,  and  the  jolly  satire  on  Screech-Owls  ; 
or  smiling  over  the  shy  Verecundulus 
and  the  too-celebrated  Misellus  who  were 
part  of  the  author's  machinery  for  add 
ing  "  Christian  ardor  to  virtue,  and  Chris 
tian  confidence  to  truth." 

Beauclerk,  like  Langton,  was  a  critic 
and  a  student ;  he  was  well-bred,  urbane, 
and  of  excellent  natural  parts  ;  moreover, 
he  was  a  wit,  one  of  the  very  foremost  of 
his  day,  when  wits  grew  in  every  garden. 
An  only  child,  he  was  born  in  London  in 
the  December  of  1739,  and  named  after 
that  benevolent  Topham  of  Windsor  who 
left  the  manors  of  Clewer  Brocas  and 
Didworth  and  a  collection  of  paintings 
and  drawings  to  his  father,  the  handsome 


wild  Lord  Sydney  Beauclerk,  fifth  son  of 
the  first  Duke  of  St.  Albans,  and  also, 
in  his  time,  a  gentleman  commoner  of 
Trinity.  Lord  Sydney  died  early,  in  the 
autumn  of  1744,  and  was  buried  in  West 
minster  Abbey  with  his  hero-brother  Au 
brey,  whose  epitaph,  still  to  be  read  there, 
Thomson  seems  to  have  written.  All  the 
pretty  toys  and  curios  passed  to  Top- 
ham  the  little  boy,  under  the  guardian 
ship  of  Lady  Beauclerk,  his  excellent 
but  literal  mother,  once  Mary  Norris  of 
Speke  in  Lancashire.  His  tutor  was 
named  Parker,  and  must  have  been  a 
much-enduring  man.  Young  Beauclerk 
grew  up,  bearing  a  resemblance  in  many 
ways  to  Charles  II.;  and  so  it  befell 
that  with  his  aggravating  flippancy,  his 
sharp  sense,  his  quiver  full  of  gibes,  his 
time-wasting,  money-wasting  moods,  for 
eign  as  Satan  and  his  pomps  to  those  of 
his  sweet-natured  college  companion,  he 
was  able  to  strike  Dr.  Johnson  in  his 
own  political  weak  spot.  A  flash  of  the 
liquid  Stuart  eye  was  enough  to  disarm 
Johnson  at  the  very  moment  when  he 
was  calling  up  his  most  austere  frown ; 


it  was  enough  to  turn  the  vinegar  of  his 
wrath  to  the  honey  of  kindness.  //  ne 
nous  reste  quune  chose  a  faire  :  embras- 
sons-nous !  as  the  wheedling  Prince,  at  a 
crisis,  says  to  Henry  Esmond.  Johnson, 
as  everybody  knows,  was  a  Jacobite.  No 
sincerer  testimony  could  he  have  given  to 
his  inexplicable  liking  for  a  royal  rogue 
than  that  he  allowed  Nell  Gwynn's  great- 
grandson  to  tease  him  and  tyrannize  over 
him  during  an  entire  lifetime.  A  choice 
spectacle  this  :  Mr.  Topham  Beauclerk, 
on  his  introduction,  literally  bewitching 
Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  !  The  stolid  moral 
ist  was  enraptured  with  his  Jack-o'-lantern 
antics ;  he  rejoiced  in  his  manners,  his 
taste  and  literary  learning;  admired  him 
indiscreetly,  rich  clothes,  equipage,  and 
all ;  followed  his  whims  meekly,  expostu 
lated  with  him  almost  against  his  traitor 
ous  impulses,  and  clung  to  him  to  the  end 
in  unbroken  fondness  and  faith. 

Beauclerk  had  immense  gayety  and 
grace,  and  the  full  force  given  by  high 
spirits.  His  accurate,  ever- widening 
knowledge  of  books  and  men,  his  con 
summate  culture,  and  his  fearlessness,  sat 


i8o 


handsomely  on  one  who  was  regarded  by 
contemporary  old  ladies  as  a  mere  "  mac 
aroni."  It  was  a  matter  of  course  that  he 
tried  for  no  degree  at  college.  The  mis 
tress  of  Streatham  Park,  who  was  by  no 
means  his  adorer,  and  who  remembered 
his  chief  wickedness  in  remembering  that 
"  he  wished  to  be  accounted  wicked,"  in 
forms  us  in  a  private  jotting  since  pub 
lished  that  he  was  "  a  man  of  very  strict 
veracity."  A  philosopher  and  a  truth- 
teller,  whatever  his  worldly  weaknesses, 
was  sure  to  be  a  character  within  the 
range  of  Johnson's  affections.  It  was  he 
who  most  troubled  the  good  Doctor,  he 
for  whom  he  suffered  in  silence,  with 
whom  he  wrangled  ;  he  whose  insupera 
ble  taunting  promise,  never  reaching  any 
special  development,  vexed  and  disheart 
ened  him  ;  yet,  perhaps  because  of  these 
very  things,  though  Bennet  Langton  was 
infinitely  more  to  his  mind,  it  was  Ab 
salom,  once  again,  whom  the  old  father 
ly  heart  loved  best.  Nor  was  he  unre- 
paid.  None  loved  him  better,  in  return, 
than  his  "  Beau,"  the  very  mirror  of  the 
name,  who  was  wont  to  pick  his  way  up 


the  grimy  Fleet  Street  courts  "with  ven 
eration,"  as  Boswell  records. 

Bennet  Langton,  as  Mr.  Forster express 
es  it  in  his  noble  Life  of  Goldsmith,  was 
"  an  eminent  example  of  the  high  and  hu 
mane  class  who  are  content  to  '  ring  the 
bell '  to  their  friends."  He  was  a  mild 
young  visionary,  scrupulous,  tolerant,  and 
generous  in  the  extreme ;  modest,  con 
templative,  averse  to  dissipation  ;  a  per 
fect  talker  and  reader,  and  a  perfect  lis 
tener ;  with  a  face  sweet  as  a  child's, 
fading  but  now,  among  his  kindred,  on 
the  canvas  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds.  He 
left  a  gracious  memory  behind  at  Oxford, 
where  his  musing  bust  adorns  the  old 
monastic  library  of  Trinity.  He  was  six 
feet  six  inches  tall,  slenderly  built,  and 
slightly  stooping.  "  The  ladies  got  about 
him  in  drawing-rooms,"  said  Edmund 
Burke,  "like  maids  about  the  Maypole!" 

Miss  Hawkins,  in  her  Memoirs,  names 
him  as  the  person  with  whom  Johnson 
was  certainly  seen  to  the  fairest  advan 
tage.  His  deferent  suave  manner  was 
the  best  foil  possible  to  the  Doctor's  ex 
traordinary  explosions.  He  had  supreme 


1 82 


self-command  ;  no  one  ever  saw  him  an 
gry ;  and  in  most  matters  of  life,  as  a 
genuine  contrast  to  his  beloved  friend 
Beauclerk,  he  was  apt  to  take  things  a 
shade  too  seriously.  We  learn  from  Mr. 
Henry  Best,  author  of  some  good  Per 
sonal  and  Literary  Memorials,  that  the 
advance  rumors  of  the  French  Revolu 
tion  found  Langton,  in  the  fullest  sense, 
an  aristocrat ;  but  it  was  not  long  before 
he  became,  from  conviction,  a  thorough 
Liberal,  and  so  remained,  although  he 
suffered  a  great  unpopularity,  owing  to 
this  change,  in  his  native  county.  He 
wrote,  in  1760,  a  little  book  of  essays 
entitled  Rustics,  which  never  got  beyond 
the  passivity  of  manuscript.  The  year 
before,  under  the  date  of  July  28th, 
Langton  contributed  to  the  pages  of 
The  Idler  the  paper  numbered  67  and 
entitled  A  Scholar  s  Journal.  It  is  a 
pleasant  study  of  procrastination  and  of 
shifting  plans,  a  gentle  bit  of  humor  to 
be  ranked  as  autobiographic.  There  is 
an  indorsement  of  Montrose  in  its  heroic 
advice  to  "  risk  the  certainty  of  little  for 
the  chance  of  much."  But  Langton's 


graceful  academic  pen  was  not  destined 
to  a  public  career.  Perseverance  of  any 
sort  was  not  native  to  him.  He  fulfilled 
beautifully,  adds  the  vivacious  Miss  Haw 
kins,  "  the  pious  injunction  of  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  'to  sit  quietly  in  the  soft  show 
ers  of  Providence,'  and  might,  without  in 
justice,  be  characterized  as  utterly  unfit 
for  every  species  of  activity."  Yet  at 
the  call  of  duty,  so  well  was  the  natural 
man  dominated  by  his  unclouded  will, 
he  girded  himself  to  any  exertion.  Wine- 
drinking  was  habitual  with  him,  and  he 
felt  its  need  to  sharpen  and  rouse  his  in 
tellect  ;  "  but  the  idea  of  Bennet  Lang- 
ton  being  what  is  called  '  overtaken,' " 
wrote  the  same  associate  whom  we  have 
been  quoting,  "  is  too  preposterous  to  be 
dwelt  on."  She  furnishes  one  illustra 
tion  of  Langton's  Greek  serenity.  Talk 
ing  to  a  company,  of  a  chilly  forenoon, 
in  his  own  house,  he  paused  to  remark 
that  if  the  fire  lacked  attention  it  might 
go  out :  a  brief,  casual,  murmurous  in 
terruption.  He  resumed  his  discourse, 
breaking  off  presently,  and  pleading  ab 
stractedly  with  eye  in  air :  "  Pray  ring 


1 84 


for  coals !"  All  sat  looking  at  the  fire, 
and  so  little  solicitous  about  the  impend 
ing  catastrophe  that  presently  Langton 
was  off  again  on  the  stream  of  his  soft 
ened  eloquence.  In  a  few  minutes  came 
another  lull.  "  Did  anybody  answer  that 
bell  ?"  A  general  negative.  "  Did  any 
body  ring  that  bell  ?"  A  sly  shaking 
of  heads.  And  once  more  the  inspired 
monody  soared  among  the  clouds,  at 
last  dropping  meditatively  to  the  hearth 
stone  :  "  Dear,  dear,  the  fire  is  out !" 

Langton  was  the  centre  of  a  group, 
wherever  he  happened  to  be,  talking  de 
lightfully,  and  twirling  the  oblong  gold- 
mounted  snuff  -  box,  which  promptly 
appeared  as  sociabilities  began  :  a  con 
spicuous  figure,  with  his  height,  his  cour 
teous  smile,  his  mild  beauty,  and  his  hab 
it  of  crossing  his  arms  over  his  breast, 
or  locking  his  hands  together  on  his 
knee.  He  was  a  great  rider,  and  could 
run  like  a  hound.  He  had  a  queerness  of 
constitution  which  seemed  to  leave  him 
at  his  lowest  ebb  every  afternoon  about 
two  of  the  clock,  forgetful,  weary,  con 
fused,  and  without  an  idea  in  his  head  ; 


but  after  a  little  food,  he  was  himself 
again.  At  dinner-parties  he  usually  rose 
fasting,  "  such  was  the  perpetual  flow  of 
his  conversation,  and  such  the  incessant 
claim  made  upon  him."  A  morning  call 
from  Mr.  Langton  was  a  thing  to  suggest 
the  eternal  years  ;  yet  we  are  told  that 
satiety  dwelt  not  where  he  was ;  like 
Cowley,  "  he  never  oppressed  any  man's 
parts,  or  put  any  man  out  of  counte 
nance."  He  had  much  the  same  sense 
of  humor  as  Beauclerk  had,  and  his 
speech  was  quite  as  full  of  good  sense 
and  direct  observation,  if  not  as  cutting. 
He  indicted  a  fault  of  Edmund  Burke's 
in  one  extreme  stroke:  "Burke  whisks 
the  end  of  his  tail  in  the  face  of  an 
arguer !"  Johnson,  the  arch-whisker  of 
tails,  was  not  to  be  brought  to  book ; 
but  Burke's  greatness  was  of  a  texture  to 
bear  and  enjoy  the  thrust.  It  is  curi 
ous  that  Langton  was  markedly  fond  of 
Hudibras ;  such  a  relish  indicates,  per 
haps,  the  turn  his  own  wit  might  have 
taken,  had  it  not  been  held  in  by  too 
much  second  thought. 
Johnson  was  wont  to  announce  that  he 


1 86 


valued  Langton  for  his  piety,  his  ancient 
descent,  his  amiable  behavior,  and  his 
mastery  of  Greek.  "  Who  in  this  town 
knows  anything  of  Clenardus,  sir,  but 
you  and  I  ?"  he  would  say.  In  the  midst 
of  his  talk  Langton  would  fall  into  the 
"  vowelled  undertone"  of  the  tongue  he 
loved,  correcting  himself  with  a  little 
wave  of  the  hands,  and  the  apologetic 
phrase:  "And  so  it  goes  on."  "Steeped 
to  the  lips  in  Greek  "  he  was  indeed, 
bursting  out  with  a  joyous  salute  to  the 
moon  of  Hellas,  upon  a  friend's  door 
step,  or  making  grotesque  Hellene  puns, 
for  his  own  delight,* upon  the  blank  leaves 
of  a  pocket  -  book.  Every  one  familiar 
with  Johnsoniana  will  recall  the  charm 
ing  and  spirited  retort  written  by  Dr. 
Barnard,  then  Dean  of  Derry,  later,  Bishop 
of  Killaloe,  which  closes  : 

"  If  I  have  thoughts  and  can't  express  'em, 
Gibbon  shall  teach  me  how  to  dress  'em 

In  terms  select  and  terse  ; 
Jones  teach  me  modesty  and  Greek; 
Smith,  how  to  think  ;  Burke,  how  to  speak  ; 

And  Beauclerk,  to  converse!" 

*  A  boyish  fashion  of  self-entertainment  afterwards  in 
great  favor  with  Shelley. 


,8; 


In  all  deference  to  the  illustrious  Sir 
William  Jones,  it  may  be  claimed  that 
"modesty  and  Greek"  were  the  very 
arts  in  which  Langton  was  a  past  -  mas 
ter.  But  he  was  an  amateur,  and  a 
private  scholar,  and  his  name  was  a 
dissyllable ;  else  the  Dean  might  have 
tossed  at  his  feet  as  pretty  a  compli 
ment  as  that  given  in  the  last  line  to 
his  colleague.  It  must  have  gratified 
Johnson  that  Langton  refused,  at  Rey- 
nolds's  dinner-table,  "like  a  sturdy  schol 
ar,"  to  sign  the  famous  Round  Robin 
(not  signed,  either,  by  Beauclerk)  which 
besought  him  to  "disgrace  the  walls  of 
Westminster  with  an  English  inscrip 
tion."  And  as  if  to  keep  Langton.  firmly 
of  his  own  mind  on  the  subject,  it  was  to 
him  the  Doctor  confided  the  Greek  qua 
train,  sad  and  proud,  which  he  had  dedi 
cated  to  Goldsmith's*  memory. 

For  Bennet  Langton  Johnson  had  no 

*  It  is  a  pleasant  thing  to  remember  that  it  was  Lang- 
ton,  always  an  appreciator  of  Goldsmith's  lovable  genius, 
who  suggested  "  Auburn  "  as  the  name  for  his  Deserted 
Village.  There  is  a  hamlet  called  Auborne  in  Lincoln 
shire. 


i88 


criticism  but  praise.  He  presented  him 
with  pride  to  Young  and  to  Richardson, 
described  him  handsomely  to  Hannah 
More,  and  proceeded  to  draw  his  char 
acter  for  Miss  Reynolds,  ere  she  had  met 
him,  with  such  "energy  and  fond  de 
light  "  as  she  avowed  she  never  could 
forget.  What  fine  ringing  metal  was 
Johnson's  commendation  !  "  He  is  one 
of  those  to  whom  Nature  has  not  spread 
her  volumes,  nor  uttered  her  voices,  in 
vain."  "  Earth  does  not  bear  a  worthier 
gentleman."  "I  know  not  who  will  go 
to  Heaven  if  Langton  does  not."  And 
in  the  sweetest  and  completest  approval 
ever  put  by  one  mortal  upon  another: 
"  Sit  anima  mea  cum  Langlono  /"  Yet 
even  with  this  "  angel  of  a  man  "  the  Doc 
tor  had  one  serious  and  ludicrous  quarrel. 
It  was  the  fatal  outcome  of  his  uneven 
moods  that  he  must  needs  be  disen 
chanted  at  times  even  with  his  best  beads 
men  :  there  came  days  when  he  would 
deny  Beauclerk's  good-humor  to  be  any 
thing  but  "  acid,"  Langton's  anything  but 
"  muddy."  He  considered  it  the  sole 
grave  fault  of  the  latter  that  he  was  too 


ready  to  introduce  a  religious  discussion 
into  a  mixed  assembly,  where  he  knew 
scarcely  any  two  of  the  company  would 
be  of  the  same  mind.  On  Boswell's  sug 
gestion  that  this  may  have  been  done  for 
the  sake  of  instructing  himself,  Johnson 
replied  angrily  that  a  man  had  no  more 
right  to  take  that  means  of  gaining  in 
formation  than  he  had  to  pit  two  persons 
against  each  other  in  a  duel  for  the  sake 
of  learning  the  art  of  self-defence.  Some 
indiscretion  of  this  sort  on  Langton's 
part  seems  to  have  alienated  the  friends 
for  the  first  and  last  time.  It  was  during 
their  transient  bitterness  that  the  Doctor 
made  the  historic  apology,  across  the 
table,  to  Oliver  Goldsmith  ;  an  incident 
which,  however  beautiful  in  itself,  was  a 
hard  back-handed  hit  at  Langton,  stand 
ing  by.  Croker's  conjecture  may  be  true 
that  the  business  which  threatened  to 
break  a  fealty  of  some  sixteen  years'  stand 
ing  arose  rather  from  Langton's  settling 
his  estate  by  will  upon  his  sisters,  whose 
tutor  he  had  been.  On  hearing  of  it,  the 
Great  Cham  grumbled  and  fumed,  polite 
ly  applying  to  the  Misses  Langton  the 


igo 


title  of  "three  dowdies!"*  and  shouting, 
in  a  feudal  warmth,  that  "  an  ancient  es 
tate,  sir !  an  ancient  estate  should  always 
go  to  males."  In  fact,  the  Doctor  be 
haved  very  badly,  very  sardonically,  and 
was  pleased  to  lay  hold  of  a  post  by  Tem 
ple  Bar  one  night,  and  roar  aloud  over  a 
piece  of  possible  folly  up  in  Lincolnshire 
which  concerned  him  not  in  the  least. 
But  in  due  time  the  breach,  whatever  its 
cause,  was  healed.  The  Doctor,  in  writ 
ing  of  it,  uses  one  of  his  balancing  sen 
tences:  "  Langton  is  a  worthy  fellow, 
without  malice,  though  not  without  re 
sentment."  The  two  could  not  keep 
apart  very  long,  despite  all  the  unreason 
in  the  world.  "Johnson's  quarrels,"  Mr. 
Forster  tells  us,  "  were  lovers'  quarrels." 
Another  memorable  passage -at -arms, 
rich  in  comedy,  happened  in  the  course 
of  one  of  Johnson's  sicknesses,  when,  in 


*  Langton's  sisters  are  generally  spoken  of  as  three  in 
number.  But  Burke's  History  of  the  Landed  Gentry 
mentions  but  two,  Diana  and  Juliet.  There  was  a  young 
er  brother,  Feme,  who  died  in  boyhood,  and  the  floral 
name,  not  unlike  a  girl's,  may  have  been  responsible  for 
the  confusion. 


the  cloistral  silence  of  his  chamber,  he 
solemnly  implored  Bennet  Langton,  al 
ways  the  companion  who  comforted  his 
sunless  hours,  to  tell  him  wherein  his 
life  had  been  faulty.  His  shy  and  saga 
cious  monitor  wrote  down,  as  accusation 
enough,  various  Scriptural  texts  recom 
mending  tolerance,  humility,  long-suffer 
ing,  and  other  meek  ingredients  which 
were  not  predominant  in  the  sinner's  so 
cial  composition.  The  penitent  earnest 
ly  thanked  Langton  on  taking  the  paper 
from  his  hand,  but  presently  turned  his 
short-sighted  eyes  upon  him  from  the 
pillow,  and  emerging  from  what  his  own 
verbology  would  call  a  "  frigorific  torpor," 
he  exclaimed  in  a  loud,  wrathful,  suspi 
cious  tone:  "What's  your  drift,  sir?" 
"  And  when  I  questioned  him,"  so  John 
son  afterwards  told  his  blustering  tale — 
"  when  I  questioned  him  as  to  what  oc 
casion  I  had  given  him  for  such  animad 
version,  all  that  he  could  say  amounted 
to  this :  that  I  sometimes  contradicted 
people  in  conversation !  Now,  what 
harm  does  it  do  any  man  to  be  contra 
dicted  ?"  To  this  same  paternal  young 


I92 


Langton  the  rebel  submitted  his  Latin 
verses ;  the  Poemata,  in  the  shape  in 
which  we  possess  them,  were  rigorously 
edited  by  him.  And  Johnson  leaned  upon 
him  in  more  intimate  ways,  as  he  could 
never  lean  upon  Beauclerk.  To  the  scru 
pulous  nature  instinctively  right  he  made 
comfortable  confidences  :  "  Men  of  harder 
minds  than  ours  will  do  many  things 
from  which  you  and  I  would  shrink ;  yet, 
sir,  they  will,  perhaps,  do  more  good  in 
life  than  we." 

As  to  the  Honorable  Topham  Beau- 
clerk,  more  volatile  than  Langton,  he  had 
as  steady  a  "  sunshine  of  cheerfulness  " 
for  his  heritage.  We  find  him  complain 
ing  to  a  friend  in  the  July  of  1773  :  "  Ev 
ery  hour  adds  to  my  misanthropy ;  and  I 
have  had  a  pretty  considerable  share  of 
it  for  some  years  past."  This  incursion 
of  low  spirits  was  not  normal  with  him. 
Johnson,  bewailing  his  own  morbid  hab 
its  of  mind,  once  said  :  "Some  men,  and 
very  thinking  men,  too,  have  not  these 
vexing  thoughts.  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds 
is  the  same  all  the  year  round ;  Beau- 
clerk,  when  not  ill  and  in  pain,  is  the 


193 


same."  Boswell  attests  that  Beauclerk 
took  more  liberties  with  Johnson  than 
durst  any  man  alive,  and  that  Johnson 
was  more  disposed  to  envy  Beauclerk's 
talents  than  those  of  any  one  he  had 
ever  known.  Born  into  the  freedom  of 
London,  Beauclerk  was  familiar  with  Fox, 
Selwyn,  and  Walpole,  and  with  the  St. 
James  men  who  did  not  ache  to  consort 
with  Johnson ;  and  he  was  quite  their 
match  in  ease  and  astuteness.  He  walked 
the  modish  world,  where  Langton  could 
not  and  would  not  follow ;  he  alternated 
the  Ship  Tavern  and  the  gaming-table 
with  the  court  levees  ;  Davies's  shop  with 
the  golden  insipidities  of  the  drawing- 
room  ;  la  come  die,  la  danse,  I"  amour  me  me, 
with  the  intellectual  tie-wigs  of  Soho. 
It  shows  something  of  his  spirit  that 
whereas  no  member  of  the  Club  save 
himself  was  a  frequenter  of  White's  and 
Betty's,*  or  a  chosen  guest  at  Strawberry 
Hill,  yet  there  was  no  person  of  fashion 
whom  he  was  not  proud  to  make  known 
to  Doctor  Johnson,  whenever  he  judged 

*  The  fruiterer. 


i94 


the  candidate  for  so  genuine  an  honor 
worthy  of  it.  Some  of  these  encoun 
ters  must  have  been  queer  and  memora 
ble ! 

Beauclerk's  unresting  sarcasm  often 
flattened  out  Boswell  and  irritated  the 
Doctor,  though  Bennet  Langton,  in  his 
abandonments  of  enthusiastic  optimism, 
was  never  more  than  grazed.  It  is  not 
to  be  denied  that  this  spoiled  child  of 
the  Club  liked  to  worry  Goldsmith,  the 
maladroit  great  man  who  might  have 
quoted  often  on  such  occasions  the  sad 
gibe  of  Hamlet : 

"  I'll  be  your  foil,  Laertes  :  in  mine  ignorance 
Your  skill  shall,  like  a  star  in  the  darkest  night, 
Stick  fiery  off  indeed." 

What  a  pity  that  Goldsmith's  Retaliation 
was  never  finished,  so  as  to  include  his 
portrait  of  Beau !  He  was  "  a  pesti 
lent  wit,"  as  Anthony  a  Wood  calls  Mar- 
vell.  Johnson,  shy  creature !  deplored 
Beauclerk's  "  predominance  over  his 
company."  The  tyranny,  however,  was 
gracefully  and  decorously  exercised,  if 
we  are  to  believe  the  unique  eulogy  that 


"no  man  was  ever  freer,  when  he  was 
about  to  say  a  good  thing,  from  a  look 
which  expressed  that  it  was  coming;  nor, 
when  he  had  said  it,  from  a  look  which 
expressed  that  it  had  come."  Few  hu 
man  beings  have  had  a  finer  sense  of  fun 
than  Topham  Beauclerk.  He  had  an  in 
fallible  eye  for  the  values  of  blunders, 
and  an  incongruity  came  home  to  him 
like  a  blessing  from  above.  Life  with 
him  was  a  night-watch  for  diverting  ob 
jects  and  ideas.  When  he  was  not  study 
ing,  he  was  disporting  himself,  like  the 
wits  of  the  Restoration ;  and  he  was 
equal  to  all  emergencies,  as  they  suc 
ceeded  one  another.  Every  specimen 
preserved  of  his  talk  is  perfect  of  its 
kind,  and  makes  us  long  for  a  full  index. 
Pointed  his  speech  was,  always,  and  re 
minds  one  indeed  of  a  foil,  but  without 
the  button ;  a  dangerous  little  weapon, 
somewhat  unfair,  but  carried  with  such 
consummate  flourish  that  those  whom  it 
pricks  could  almost  cheer  it.  "  O  Lord ! 
how  I  did  hate  that  horrid  Beauclerk !" 
Mrs.  Piozzi  scribbled  once  on  the  margin 
of  Wraxall's  Memoirs,  in  an  exquisite 


I96 


feminine  vindication  of  poor  Beau's  ac 
complished  tongue. 

He  was  no  disguiser  of  his  own  likes 
and  dislikes.  Politics  he  avoided  as 
much  as  possible ;  but  he  affected  less 
concern  in  public  matters  than  he  real 
ly  felt.  "  Consecrate  that  time  to  your 
friends,"  he  writes  with  mock  severity  to 
the  ideal  Irishman,  Lord  Charlemont, 
"which  you  spend  in  endeavoring  to 
promote  the  interests  of  a  half -million 
of  scoundrels."  For  his  private  business 
he  had  least  zeal  of  all ;  and  cites  "  my 
own  confounded  affairs  "  as  the  cause  of 
his  going  into  Lancashire.  Beauclerk 
had  great  tact,  boldness,  and  indepen 
dence  ;  his  natural  scorn  of  an  oppressor 
was  his  modern  and  democratic  quality. 
His  idleness  (for  he  was  as  idle  by  habit 
as  Langton  was  by  nature)  he  recog 
nized,  and  lightly  deprecated.  Fastidious 
in  everything,  he  made  "  one  hour  of  con 
versation  at  Elmsley's  "  *  his  standard  of 
enjoyment,  and  his  imagined  extreme  of 
annoyance  was  "  to  be  clapped  on  the 

*  The  bookseller's. 


i97 


back  by  Tom  Davies."  What  he  chose 
to  call  his  leisure  (again  the  ancestral 
Stuart  trait!)  he  dedicated  to  the  natural 
sciences  in  his  beloved  laboratory.  "  I 
see  Mr.  Beauclerk  often,  both  in  town 
and  country,"  wrote  Goldsmith  to  Ben- 
net  Langton  ;  "he  is  now  going  directly 
forward  to  become  a  second  Boyle,  deep 
in  chemistry  and  physics."  When  there 
was  some  fanciful  talk  of  setting  up  the 
Club  as  a  college,  "to  draw  a  wonderful 
concourse  of  students,"  Beauclerk,  by 
unanimous  vote,  was  elected  to  the  pro 
fessorship  of  Natural  Philosophy. 

Johnson's  influence  on  him,  potent 
though  it  was,  seems  to  have  been  nega 
tive  enough.  It  kept  him  from  a  few 
questionable  things,  and  preserved  in  him 
an  outward  decorum  towards  customs 
and  established  institutions  ;  but  it  failed 
to  incite  him  to  make  of  his  manifold 
talents  the  "  illustrious  figure "  which 
Langton 's  eyes  discerned  in  a  vain  an 
ticipation.  Beauclerk  and  the  great 
High  Churchman  went  about  much  to 
gether,  and  had  amusing  experiences. 
On  such  occasions,  as  in  all  their  famil- 


198 


iar  intercourse,  the  disciple  had  the  true 
salt  of  the  Doctor's  talk,  which,  as  Haz- 
litt  remarks,  was  often  something  quite 
unlike  "  the  cumbrous  cargo  of  words  " 
he  kept  for  professional  use.  In  the  late 
winter  of  1765  the  two  visited  Cam 
bridge,  Beauclerk  having  a  mind  to  call 
upon  a  friend  at  Trinity. 

These,  as  we  know,  had  their  many 
differences,  "  like  a  Spanish  great  galleon, 
and  an  English  man  -o'-  war";  the  one 
smooth,  sharp,  and  civil,  the  other  indig 
nantly  dealing  with  the  butt-end  of  per 
sonality.  Boswell  gives  a  long  account 
of  a  charming  dispute  concerning  the 
murderer  of  Miss  Reay,  and  the  evidence 
of  his  having  carried  two  pistols.  Beau- 
clerk  was  right ;  but  Johnson,  with  quite 
as  solid  a  sense  of  virtue,  was  angry  ;  and 
he  was  soothed  at  the  end  only  by  an 
adroit  and  affectionate  reply.  "  Sir," 
the  Doctor  began,  sternly,  at  another 
time,  after  listening  to  some  mischievous 
waggery,  "you  never  open  your  mouth 
but  with  the  intention  to  give  pain,  and 
you  often  give  me  pain,  not  from  the 
power  of  what  you  say,  but  from  seeing 


199 


"your  intention."  And  again,  he  said  to 
him  whom  he  had  compared  to  Alexan 
der,  marching  in  triumph  into  Babylon  : 
"  You  have,  sir !  a  love  of  folly,  and  a 
scorn  of  fools ;  everything  you  do  attests 
the  one,  and  everything  you  say  the  oth 
er."*  Beauclerk  could  also  lecture  his 
mentor.  It  was  his  steadfast  counsel 
that  the  Doctor  should  devote  himself 
to  poetry,  and  draw  in  his  horns  of  dog 
ma  and  didactics. 

He  had,  ever  ready,  some  quaint  simile 
or  odd  application  from  the  classics;  in 
the  habit  of  "  talking  from  books,"  as  the 
Doctor  called  it,  he  was,  however,  dis 
tanced  by  Langton.  Referring  to  that 
friend's  habit  of  sitting  or  standing  against 
the  fireplace,  with  one  long  leg  twisted 
about  the  other,  "  as  if  fearing  to  occupy 
too  much  space,"  Beauclerk  likened  him, 
for  all  the  world,  to  the  stork  in  Raphael's 
cartoon  of  The  Miraculous  Draught. f 
One  of  Beauclerk's  happiest  hits,  and  cer- 

*  Rochester,  in  his  immortal  epigram,  had  said  the 
same  of  King  Charles  II. 

t  This  neat  descriptive  stroke  has  been  attributed  also 
to  Richard  Paget. 


tainly  his  boldest,  was  made  while  John= 
son  was  being  congratulated  upon  his 
pension.  "  How  much  now  it  was  to  be 
hoped,"  whispered  the  young  blood,  in 
reference  to  Falstaff's  celebrated  vow, 
"that  he  would  purge  and  live  cleanly,  as 
a  gentleman  should  do  !"  Johnson  seems 
to  have  taken  the  hint  in  good  -  humor, 
and  actually  to  have  profited  by  it. 

Very  soon  after  leaving  Oxford,  Beau- 
clerk  became  engaged  to  a  Miss  Dray- 
cott,  whose  family  were  well  known  to 
that  affable  blue-stocking,  Mrs.  Monta 
gu  ;  but  some  coldness  on  his  part,  some 
sensitiveness  on  hers,  broke  off  the 
match.  His  fortune  -  hunting  parent  is 
said  to  have  been  disappointed,  as  the 
lady  owned  several  lead -mines  in  her 
own  right.  That  same  year,  with  Ben- 
net  Langton  for  companion  part  of  the 
way,  Beauclerk,  whose  health,  never  ro 
bust,  now  began  to  give  him  anxiety, 
set  out  on  a  Continental  tour.  Baretti, 
whom  he  had  met  at  home,  received  him 
most  kindly  at  Milan,  thanks  to  Johnson's 
urgent  and  friendly  letter.  By  his  sub 
sequent  knowledge  of  Italian  popular cus- 


toms,  he  was  able  to  testify  in  Baret- 
ti's  favor,  when  the  latter  was  under  ar 
rest  for  killing  his  man  in  the  Haymarket, 
and  in  concert  with  Burke,  Garrick,  Gold 
smith,  and  Johnson,  to  help  him,  in  a  very 
interesting  case,  towards  his  acquittal. 
It  was  reported  to  Selwyn  that  the 
handsome  gambling  Inglese  was  robbed 
at  Venice  of  ,£10,000 !  an  incident  which, 
perhaps,  shortened  his  peregrinations. 
If  the  report  were  accurate,  it  would 
prove  that  he  could  have  been  in  no 
immediate  need  of  pecuniary  rescue 
from  his  leaden  sweetheart.  It  was 
Dr.  Johnson's  opinion,  coinciding  with 
the  opinion  of  Roger  Ascham  on  the 
same  general  subject,  that  travel  adds 
very  little  to  one's  mental  forces,  and 
that  Beauclerk  might  have  learned 
more  in  the  Academe  of  "  Fleet  Street, 
sir!" 

Topham  Beauclerk  married  Lady  Di 
ana  Spencer,  the  eldest  daughter  of  the 
second  Duke  of  Maryborough,  as  soon  as 
she  obtained  a  divorce  from  her  first 
husband.  This  was  Frederick,  Lord  Bol- 
ingbroke,  nephew  and  heir  of  the  great 


owner  of  that  title ;  a  very  trying  gen 
tleman,  who  was  the  restless  "  Bully  "  of 
Selwyn's  correspondence ;  he  survived 
until  1787.  The  ceremony  took  place 
March  12,  1768,  in  St.  George's,  Han 
over  Square,  "  by  license  of  the  Arch 
bishop  of  Canterbury,"  both  conspira 
tors  being  then  residents  of  the  parish. 
Lady  Diana  Spencer  was  born  in  the 
spring  of  1734,  and  was  therefore  in  her 
thirty-fifth  year,  while  Beauclerk  was  but 
twenty -nine.*  Johnson  was  disturbed, 
and  felt  offended  at  first  with  the  whole 
affair  ;  but  he  never  withdrew  from  the 
agreeable  society  of  Beauclerk's  wife.  It 
is  nothing  wonderful  that  the  court 
ship  and  honey -moon  was  signalized 
by  the  forfeit  of  Beauclerk's  place  in 
the  exacting  Club,  "  for  continued  inat- 
tendance,"  and  not  regained  for  a  con 
siderable  period.  "  They  are  in  town, 

*  The  register  of  St.  George's  betrays  a  little  eager 
blunder  of  Lady  Di's  which  is  amusing.  When  the  offi 
ciating  curate  asked  her  to  sign,  she  wrote  "  Diana  Beau- 
clerk,"  and  was  obliged  to  cross  out  the  signature — one 
knows  with  what  a  smile  and  a  flush  !— and  substitute  the 
"Diana  Spencer"  which  stands  beside  it. 


at  Topham's  house,  and  give  dinners," 
one  of  George  Selwyn's  gossiping  friends 
wrote,  after  the  wedding.  "  Lord  An- 
cram  dined  there  yesterday,  and  called 
her  nothing  but  Lady  Bolingbroke  the 
whole  time!"  Let  us  hope  that  "Mi 
lady  Bully"  triumphed  over  her  awk 
ward  guest,  and  looked,  as  Earl  March 
once  described  her  under  other  difficul 
ties,  "  handsomer  than  ever  I  saw  her,  and 
not  the  least  abashed  ;"  or  as  deliberately 
easy  as  when  she  entertained  with  her 
gay  talk  the  nervous  Boswell  who  awaited 
the  news  of  his  election  or  rejection  from 
the  Club.  She  was  a  blond  goddess, 
exceedingly  fair  to  see.  In  her  middle 
age  she  fell  under  the  observant  glance 
of  delightful  Fanny  Burney,  who  did  not 
fail  to  allow  her  "  pleasing  remains  of 
beauty." 

The  divorcee  was  fond  of  and  faithful 
to  her  new  lord,  and  no  drawback  upon  his 
aesthetic  pride,  inasmuch  as  she  was  an 
artist  of  no  mean  merit.  Horace  Wai- 
pole  built  a  room  for  the  reception  of 
some  of  her  drawings,  which  he  called 
his  Beauclerk  Closet,  "  not  to  be  shown 


204 


to  all  the  profane  that  come  to  see  the 
house,"  and  he  always  praised  them  ex 
travagantly.  It  is  surer  critical  testi 
mony  in  her  favor  that  her  name  figures 
yet  in  encyclopaedias,  and  that  Sir  Joshua, 
the  honest  and  unbought  judge,  much 
admired  her  work,  which  Bartolozzi  was 
kept  busy  engraving.  It  was  her  series 
of  illustrations  to  Biirger's  wild  ballad  of 
Leonora  (with  the  dolly  knight,  the  wood 
en  monks,  the  genteel  heroine,  and  the 
vigorous  spectres)  which,  long  after,  helped 
to  fire  the  young  imagination  of  Shelley. 
It  is  to  be  feared  that  her  invaluable  por 
trait  of  Samuel  Johnson  is  not,  or  never 
was, extant.  "Johnson  was  confined  for 
some  days  in  the  Isle  of  Skye,"  writes  her 
rogue  of  a  spouse,  "  and  we  hear  that  he 
was  obliged  to  swim  over  to  the  mainland, 
taking  hold  of  a  cow's  tail.  .  .  .  Lady  Di 
has  promised  to  make  a  drawing  of  it." 
Sir  Joshua's  pretty  "  Una "  is  the  little 
Elizabeth,  afterwards  Countess  of  Pem 
broke,  elder  daughter  of  Lady  Di  and 
Topham  Beauclerk,  painted  the  year  her 
father  died. 

The    family    lived    in    princely    style, 


205 


both  at  their  "  summer  quarters  "  at  Mus- 
well  Hill,  and  on  Great  Russell  Street, 
where  the  library,  set  in  a  great  gar 
den,  reached,  as  Walpole  mischievous 
ly  gauged  it,  "half-way  to  Highgate." 
Lady  Di,  an  admirable  hostess,  proved 
herself  one  of  those  odd  and  rare  women 
who  take  to  their  husbands'  old  friends. 
Selwyn  she  cordially  liked,  and  her  warm 
est  welcome  attended  Langton,  whom  she 
would  rally  for  his  remiSsness,  when  he 
failed  to  come  to  them  at  Richmond. 
He  could  reach  them  so  easily  !  she  said  ; 
all  he  need  do  was  to  lay  himself  at 
length,  his  feet  in  London  and  his  head 
with  them,  eodem  die.  This  Richmond 
home  remained  her  residence  during  her 
widowhood.  Walpole  mentions  a  Thames 
boat-race  in  1791,  when  he  sat  in  a  tent 
"just  before  Lady  Di's  windows,"  and 
gazed  upon  "  a  scene  that  only  Richmond, 
on  earth,  can  exhibit."  In  the  church  of 
the  same  leafy  town  her  body  rests. 

Beauclerk  died  at  his  Great  Russell 
Street  house  on  March  11, 1780.  He  had 
been  failing  steadily  under  visitations  of 
his  old  trouble  since  1777,  when  he  lay 


206 


sick  unto  death  at  Bath,  and  when  his  wife 
nursed  him  tenderly  into  what  seemed 
to  Walpole  a  miraculous  recovery.  He 
was  but  forty -one  years  old,  and,  for  all 
his  genius,  left  no  more  trace  behind  than 
that  Persian  prince  who  suddenly  disap 
peared  in  the  shape  of  a  butterfly,  and 
whom  old  Burton  calls  a  "  light  phantas- 
tick  fellow."  His  air  of  boyish  promise, 
quite  unconsciously  worn,  hoodwinked  his 
friends  into  prophecies  of  his  fame.  He 
did  not  give  events  a  chance  to  put  im 
mortality  on  his  "bright,  unbowed,  in- 
submissive  head."  Yet  he  was  bitterly 
mourned.  "  I  would  walk  to  the  extent 
of  the  diameter  of  the  earth  to  save  him," 
cried  Johnson,  who  had  loved  him  for 
over  twenty  years ;  and  again,  to  Lord 
Althorp:  "This  is  a  loss,  sir,  that  per 
haps  the  whole  nation  could  not  repair." 
Boswell  mentions  the  Doctor's  April 
stroll,  at  this  time,  while  he  was  writing 
his  Lives  of  the  Poets ;  and  tells  us  how, 
returning  from  a  call  on  the  widow  of 
the  companion  of  his  youth,  David  Gar- 
rick,  he  leaned  over  the  rails  of  the 
Adelphi  Terrace,  watching  the  dark  riv- 


207 


er,  and  thinking  of  "two  such  friends  as 
cannot  be  supplied."  "  Poor  dear  Beau- 
clerk  !"  Johnson  wrote,  when  his  violent 
grief  had  somewhat  subsided,  "nee,  ut 
soles,  dabisj oca!  His  wit  and  his  folly, 
his  acuteness  and  his  maliciousness,  his 
merriment  and  his  reasoning,  are  alike 
over.  Such  another  will  not  often  be 
found  among  mankind."  Beyond  this 
well-known  and  characteristic  summing- 
up,  the  Doctor  made  no  discoverable 
mention,  in  his  correspondence,  of  his 
bereavement,  certainly  not  to  the  highly- 
prejudiced  Mrs.  Thrale,  to  whom  he  wrote 
often  and  gayly  in  the  year  of  Beauclerk's 
death.  Nor  shall  we  know  how  the  ca 
tastrophe  affected  Bennet  Langton;  for 
all  the  most  interesting  papers  relating 
to  him  were  destroyed  when  the  old  Hall 
at  Langton- by -Spilsby  was  burned  in 
1855.  On  this  subject,  as  on  others  as 
intimate,  he  stands,  perforce,  silent. 

Readers  may  recall  a  passage  in  Miss 
Burney's  Diary  which  gives  countenance 
to  an  accusation  not  borne  out  by  any 
other  testimony,  that  Beauclerk  and  his 
wife  had  not  lived  happily  together.  Din- 


208 


ing  at  Sir  Joshua's  at  Richmond,  in  1782, 
Edmund  Burke,  sitting  next  the  author 
of  Evelina,  took  occasion,  on  catching 
sight  of  Lady  Di's  "  pretty  white  house  " 
through  the  trees,  to  rejoice  in  the  fact 
that  she  was  well-housed,  moneyed,  and 
a  widow.  He  added  that  he  had  never 
enjoyed  the  good-fortune  of  another  so 
keenly  as  in  this  blessed  instance.  Then, 
turning  to  his  new  acquaintance,  as  the 
least  likely  to  be  informed  of  the  matter, 
he  spoke  in  his  own  "  strong  and  marked 
expressions  "  of  the  singular  ill-treatment 
Beauclerk  had  shown  his  wife,  and  the 
"  necessary  relief "  it  must  have  been  to 
her  when  he  was  called  away.  The  state 
ment  does  not  seem  to  have  been  gain 
said  by  any  of  the  company ;  nor  was 
Burke  liable  to  a  slanderous  error.  So 
severe  a  comment  on  Beauclerk,  resting, 
even  as  it  does,  wholly  on  Miss  Burney's 
veracity,  ought,  in  fairness,  to  be  incor 
porated  into  any  sketch  of  the  man.  On 
the  other  side,  it  is  pleasant  to  discover 
that  Beauclerk,  in  his  will,  made  five  days 
before  the  end,  bequeathed  all  he  pos 
sessed  to  his  wife,  and  reverted  to  her  the 


estates  of  his  children,  should  they  die 
under  age.  There  was  but  one  bequest 
beyond  these,  and  that  was  to  Thomas 
Clarke,  the  faithful  valet.  The  executors 
named  were  Lady  Di  and  her  brother, 
Lord  Charles  Spencer,  who  had  also  been 
groomsman  at  the  marriage,  which,  de 
spite  Burke  and  its  own  evil  beginnings, 
it  is  hard  to  think  of  as  ill-starred.  The 
joint  guardians  of  Charles  George  Beau- 
clerk,  the  only  son,  were  to  be  Bennet 
Langton  and  a  Mr.  Loyrester,  whom 
Dr.  Johnson  speaks  of  as  "  Leicester, 
Beauclerk's  relation,  and  a  man  of  good 
character;"  but  the  guardianship,  provi 
sional  in  case  of  Lady  Di's  decease,  never 
came  into  force,  as  she  survived,  in  full 
est  harmony  with  her  three  children,  up 
to  August  i,  1808,  having  entered  her 
seventy-fifth  year.  Various  private  leg 
acies  came  to  Langton,  by  his  old  com 
rade's  dying  wish, the  most  precious  among 
them,  perhaps,  being  the  fine  Reynolds 
portrait  of  Johnson,  which  had  been  paint 
ed  at  Beauclerk's  cost.  Under  it  was  in 
scribed  : 

"  Ingcniiim  in  gens 
Inculto  latet  hoc  sub  corpore." 


Langton  thoughtfully  effaced  the  lines. 
"  It  was  kind  of  you  to  take  it  off,"  said 
the  burly  Doctor,  with  a  sigh  ;  and  then 
(for  how  could  he  but  recall  the  contrast 
of  temperament  in  the  two,  as  well  as  the 
affectionate  context  of  Horace?),  "  not 
unkind  in  him  to  have  put  it  on."  The 
collection  of  thirty  thousand  glorious 
books " pernobilis  Angli  T,  fieauclerk"vfa.s 
sold  at  auction.  The  advertisement  alone 
is  royal  reading.  There  is  much  amiable 
witness  to  the  circumstance  that  Beau- 
clerk  was  not  only  an  admirer  but  a 
buyer  of  his  friends'  works.  From  some 
kind  busybody  who  attended  the  twenty- 
ninth  day  of  the  sale,  and  pencilled  his 
observations  upon  the  margins  of  the 
catalogue  now  in  the  British  Museum, 
we  learn  that  Goldsmith's  History  of  the 
Earth  and  Animated  Nature  (nothing 
less  !),  which  was  issued,  with  cuts,  in  the 
year  he  died,  was  knocked  down  to  the 
vulgar  for  two  and  threepence.  The 
shelves,  naturally,  were  stocked  with 
Johnsons.  Things  dear  to  the  bibliophile 
were  there :  innumerable  first  editions, 
black-letter,  mediaeval  manuscript,  Elze- 


virs,  priceless  English  and  Italian  classics, 
gathered  with  real  feeling  and  pride  ;  but 
the  most  vivid  personal  interest  belonged 
to  the  unpretending  Lot  3444,  otherwise 
known  to  fame  as  The  Rambler,  printed 
at  Edinburgh  in  1751  ;  for  that  was  the 
young  Beauclerk's  own  copy,  carried  with 
him  to  Oxford,  and  with  a  fragrance,  as 
of  a  last  century  garden,  of  the  first  hearty 
friendship  of  boys.  One  cannot  help 
wishing  that  a  sentimental  fate  left  it  in 
Langton's  own  hands. 

Lady  Beauclerk,  Topham's  mother, 
had  died  in  1766;  and  he  asked  to  be 
buried  beside  her,  or  at  her  feet,  in  the 
old  chapel  of  Garston,  near  Liverpool : 
"an  instance  of  tenderness,"  said  John 
son,  "which  I  should  hardly  have  ex 
pected."  There,  in  the  place  of  his  choice, 
he  rests,  without  an  epitaph. 

After  this  the  Doctor  consoled  him 
self  more  than  ever  with  Bennet  Lang- 
ton,  and  with  the  atmosphere  of  love 
and  reverence  which  surrounded  him  in 
Langton's  house.  He  had  been  of  old 
the  most  desired  of  all  guests  at  the 
family  seat  in  Lincolnshire.  "  Langton, 


sir!"  as  he  liked  to  announce,  "had  a 
grant  of  warren  from  Henry  II.;  and 
Cardinal  Stephen  Langton,  of  King  John's 
reign,  was  of  this  family."  Peregrine 
Langton,  Bennet's  uncle,  was  a  man 
of  simple  and  benevolent  habits,  who 
brought  economy  to  a  science,  without 
niggardliness,  and  whom  Johnson  de 
clared  to  be  one  of  those  he  clung  to 
at  once,  both  by  instinct  and  reason ; 
Bennet's  father,  learned,  good,  and  un 
affected,  the  prototype  of  his  learned, 
good,  and  unaffected  son,  was,  however, 
a  more  diverting  character.  He  had 
sincerest  esteem  for  Johnson,  but  looked 
askance  on  him  for  his  liberal  views, 
and  suspected  him,  indeed,  of  being  a 
Papist  in  secret !  He  once  offered  the 
Doctor  a  living  of  some  value  in  the 
neighborhood,  with  the  suggestion  that 
he  should  qualify  himself  for  Orders : 
a  chance  gravely  refused.  Of  this  exem 
plary  but  rather  archaic  squire,  Johnson, 
a  dissector  of  everything  he  loved,  said  : 
"  Sir!  he  is  so  exuberant  a  talker  in  pub 
lic  meetings  that  the  gentlemen  of  his 
county  are  afraid  of  him.  No  business 


can  be  done  for  his  declamation."  In 
his  behalf,  too,  Johnson  produced  one  of 
his  most  astounding  words ;  for  having 
understood  that  both  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lang- 
ton  were  averse  to  having  their  portraits 
taken,  he  observed  aloud  that  "  a  super 
stitious  reluctance  to  sit  for  one's  picture 
is  among  the  anfractuosities  of  the  hu 
man  mind." 

Bennet  Langton  married,  on  the  24th 
of  May,  1770,  Mary  Lloyd,  daughter  of  the 
Countess  of  Haddington,  and  widow  of 
John,  the  eighth  Earl  of  Rothes,  the  stern 
soldier  in  laced  waistcoat  and  breast 
plate  beneath,  painted  by  Sir  Joshua.  It 
was  a  common  saying  at  the  time  that 
everybody  was  welcome  to  a  Countess 
Dowager  of  Rothes ;  for  it  did  so  hap 
pen  that  three  ladies  bearing  that  title 
were  all  remarried  within  a  few  years. 
Lady  Rothes,  although  a  native  of  Suf 
folk,  had  acquired  from  long  residence 
in  Scotland  the  accent  of  that  country, 
which  Dr.  Johnson  bore  with  magnani 
mously,  on  the  consideration  that  it  was 
not  indigenous.  She  had  a  handsome 
presence,  full  of  easy  dignity,  and  a  nat- 


214 


uralness  marked  enough  in  the  heyday 
of  Georgian  affectation.  With  a  vivacity 
very  different  from  Lady  Di  Beauclerk's, 
she  kept  herself  the  spring  and  centre 
of  Langton's  tranquil  domestic  circle  :  a 
more  womanly  woman  historiographers 
cannot  find.  His  own  charm  of  charac 
ter,  after  his  marriage,  slipped  more 
and  more  into  the  underground  channels 
of  home-life,  and  so  coursed  on  benefi 
cently  in  silence.  Their  children  were 
no  fewer  than  nine,*  "  not  a  plain  face 
nor  faulty  person  among  them  :"  the  god 
dess  daughters  six  feet  in  height,  and  the 
three  sons  so  like  their  Maypole  father 
that  they  were  able  once  to  amuse  the 
Parisians  by  raising  their  arms  to  let  a 
crowd  pass.  Langton  was  wont  to  re 
peat  with  some  glee  certain  jests  about 
his  height,  and  Dr.  Johnson's  nickname 
of  "  Lanky "  he  took  ever  with  excel 
lent  grace ;  and  when  Garrick  had  leaped 
upon  a  chair  to  shake  hands  with  him, 
in  old  days,  he  had  knelt,  at  parting,  to 
shake  hands  with  Garrick.  But  the  King's 

*  Miss   Hawkins  says  "ten,"  and  may  have  had  the 
extra  adopted  child  in  mind. 


215 


awkward  digs  at  his  "long  legs"  he 
found  terribly  distasteful,  nor  was  he 
thereby  disposed  to  agree  with  the  Doc 
tor's  enthusiastic  proclamation,  after  the 
famous  interview  of  1767,  that  George  III. 
was  "as  fine  a  gentleman  as  Charles  II." 
It  was  his  cherished  plan  to  educate 
his  boys  and  girls  at  home,  and  to  give 
them  a  thorough  acquaintance  with  the 
learned  languages.  No  social  engage 
ments  were  to  stand  in  the  way  of  this 
prime  exigency.  He  was  in  great  haste 
to  turn  his  young  brood  into  Masters  and 
Mistresses  of  Arts.  Johnson  complained 
to  Miss  Burney,  as  they  were  both  tak 
ing  tea  at  Mrs.  Thrale's,  that  nothing 
would  serve  Langton  but  to  stand  them 
up  before  company,  and  get  them  to  re 
peat  a  fable  or  the  Hebrew  alphabet,  sup 
plying  every  other  word  himself,  and 
blushing  with  pride  at  the  vicarious  learn 
ing  of  his  infants.  But  another  of  the 
tedious  royal  jokes,  "  How  does  Educa 
tion  go  on  ?"  actually  lessened  his  devo 
tion  to  his  self-set  task,  and  worried  him 
like  the  water-drop  in  the  story,  which 
fell  forever  on  a  criminal's  head  until  it 


2l6 


had  drilled  his  brain.  Again,  both  he 
and  his  wife,  even  after  they  had  moved 
into  the  retirement  of  Great  George 
Street,  Westminster,  in  pursuance  of  their 
design,  were  far  too  agreeable  and  too  ac 
cessible  to  be  spared  the  incursions  of  soci 
ety.  In  a  word,  Minerva  found  her  seat 
shaken,  and  her  altar-fires  not  very  well 
tended,  and  therefore  withdrew.  Lang- 
ton  impressed  one  axiom  on  his  young 
scholars  which  they  never  forgot :  "  Next 
best  to  knowing  is  to  be  sensible  that 
you  do  not  know."  An  entirely  super 
fluous  waif  of  a  baby  was  once  left  at 
the  doors  of  this  same  many-childrened 
house/to  be  fed,  clothed,  and  petted  by 
Mr.  Bennet  Langton  and  Lady  Rothes, 
without  protest.  Dr.  Johnson,  who  made 
friends  with  all  children,  was  especial 
ly  attached  to  their  third  girl,  his  god 
daughter,  whom  he  called  "  pretty  Mrs. 
Jane," and  "my  own  little  Jenny."  The 
very  last  year  of  his  life  her  "  most  hum 
ble  servant "  sent  her  a  loving  letter, 
extant  yet,  and  written  purposely  in  a 
large  round  hand  as  clear  as  print. 

"  Langton's  children  are  very  pretty," 


Johnson  wrote  to  Bosvvell  in  1777,  "and 
his  lady  loses  her  Scotch."  But  again, 
during  the  same  year,  condescendingly : 
"  I  dined  lately  with  poor  dear  Langton. 
I  do  not  think  he  goes  on  well.  His  table 
is  rather  coarse,  and  he  has  his  children 
too  much  about  him."  Boswell  takes 
occasion,  in  reproducing  this  censure,  to 
reprehend  the  custom  of  introducing  the 
children  after  dinner :  a  parental  indul 
gence  to  which  he,  at  least,  was  not  ad 
dicted.  The  Doctor  gave  him  a  mild 
nudge  on  the  subject  in  remarking  later  : 
"  I  left  Langton  in  London.  He  has 
been  down  with  the  militia,  and  is  again 
quiet  at  home,  talking  to  his  little  people, 
as  I  suppose  you  do  sometimes."  While 
Langton  was  in  camp  on  Warley  Com 
mon,  in  command  of  the  Lincolnshire 
troops,  Johnson  spent  with  him  five  de 
lightful  days,  admiring  his  tall  captain's 
blossoming  energies,  and  poking  about 
curiously  among  the  tents.  Langton 
had  fallen,  little  by  little,  into  a  confirmed 
extravagance,  so  that  the  moral  of  Uncle 
Peregrine's  sagacious  living  bade  fair  to 
be  lost  upon  him.  Boswell  had  a  quarrel 


2l8 


with  Johnson  on  the  subject  of  Langton 's 
expenditure,  during  the  course  of  which, 
according  to  his  own  report,  the  Laird  of 
Auchinleck  suffered  a  "horrible  shock" 
by  being  told  that  the  best  way  to  drive 
Langton  out  of  his  costly  house  would 
be  to  put  him  (Boswell)  into  it.  The 
Doctor  was  truly  concerned,  nevertheless, 
about  his  engaging  spendthrift;  up  to 
the  very  end,  he  would  implore  him  to 
keep  account -books,  even  if  he  had  to 
omit  his  Aristophanes.  "  He  complains  of 
the  ill  effects  of  habit,"  grumbled  the 
great  moralizer,  "and  he  rests  content 
upon  a  confessed  indolence.  He  told  his 
father  himself  that  he  had  'no  turn  for 
economy  !'  but  a  thief  might  as  well  plead 
that  he  had  no  turn  for  honesty."  Such 
were  the  hard  hits  sacred  to  those  Dr. 
Johnson  most  esteemed.  It  transpires 
from  his  will  that,  by  way  of  discourage 
ment,  he  had  lent  Langton  ^750.* 

*  It  is  a  pity  he  did  not  live  to  read  the  jolly  Ameri 
can  Ballad  of  Bon  Gaultier,  which  seems  to  have  a  sort 
of  muddled  clairvoyant  knowledge  of  this  transaction: 

"  Every  day  the  huge  Cawana 
Lifted  up  its  monstrous  jaws  ; 


2ig 


In  the  winter  of  1785,  Langton  came 
from  the  country,  and  took  lodgings  in 
Fleet  Street,  in  order  to  sit  beside  John 
son  as  he  lay  dying,  and  hold  his  hand. 
Nor  was  he  alone  in  his  pious  offices : 
the  Hooles,  Mr.  Sestre,  and  several  oth 
ers  were  there,  to  keep  constant  vigil. 
Miss  Burney  met  Langton  in  the  passage 
December  i  ith,  two  days  before  the  end  : 
"  He  could  not,"  she  wrote  in  her  journal, 
"  look  at  me,  nor  I  at  him."  But  through 
the  foggy  and  restless  nights  when  John 
son  tried  to  cheer  himself,  like  More  and 
Master  William  Lilly,  by  translating  into 
Latin  some  epigrams  from  the  Anthologta, 
the  true  Grecian  beside  him  must  have 
been  his  chief  comfort.  One  can  picture 
the  old  eyes  turning  to  him  for  sympa 
thy,  perhaps  with  that  same  murmured 
"  Lanky !"  on  awaking,  which  Boswell 
laughed  to  hear  from  him  one  merry 

And  it  swallowed  Langton  Bennet,  (!) 
And  digested  Rufus  Dawes. 

"  Riled,  I  ween,  was  Philip  Slingsby 

Their  untimely  deaths  to  hear  ; 

For  one  author  owed  him  money,  (!) 

And  the  other  loved  him  dear." 


Hebridean  morning,  twelve  years  before. 
The  last  summons  did  not  come  in  Lang- 
ton's  presence.  Hurrying  over  to  Bolt 
Court  at  eight  of  the  fatal  evening,  he  was 
told  that  all  was  over  three-quarters  of 
an  hour  ago.  That  large  soul  had  gone 
away,  as  Leigh  Hunt  so  beautifully  said 
of  Coleridge,  "to  an  infinitude  hardly 
wider  than  his  thoughts."  Then  Langton, 
who  was  wont  to  shape  his  words  with 
grace  and  ease,  went  up-stairs,  and  tried 
to  pen  a  letter  to  Boswell,  which  is  more 
touching  than  tears:  "I  am  now  sitting 
in  the  room  where  his  venerable  remains 
exhibit  a  spectacle,  the  interesting  so 
lemnity  of  which,  difficult  as  it  would  be 
in  any  sort  to  find  terms  to  express,  so 
to  you,  my  dear  sir,  whose  sensations 
will  paint  it  so  strongly,  it  would  be  of 
all  men  the  most  superfluous  to" — and 
there,  hopelessly  choked  and  confused,  it 
broke  off. 

Langton  bore  Johnson's  pall ;  and  he 
succeeded  him  as  Professor  of  Ancient 
Literature  in  the  Royal  Academy,  as  Gib 
bon  had  replaced  Goldsmith  in  the  chair 
of  Ancient  History.  He  survived  many 


years,  the  delight  of  his  company  to  the 
last.  He,  like  others,  was  given  in  his 
later  years  to  detailing  anecdotes  of  his 
great  friend,  with  an  approximation  to 
that  friend's  manner.  One  lady  critic,  at 
least,  thought  that  these  explosive  imita 
tions  did  not  become  "  his  own  serious 
and  respectable  character."  On  Decem 
ber  1 8,  1801,  in  Anspach  Place,  South 
ampton,  a  venerable  nook  "between  the 
walls  and  the  sea,"  when  Wordsworth, 
Scott,  and  Coleridge  were  yet  in  their 
unheralded  prime,  when  Charles  Lamb 
was  twenty-six,  Byron  a  dreaming  boy  on 
the  Cotswold  hills,  and  Keats  and  Shelley 
little  fair -eyed  children,  gentle  Bennet 
Langton,  known  to  none  of  these,  and 
somewhat  forgotten  as  a  loiterer  from 
the  march  of  a  glorious  yesterday,  slipped 
out  of  life.  "  I  am  persuaded,"  wrote 
one  who  knew  him  well,  "that  all  his  in 
activity,  all  the  repugnance  he  showed  to 
putting  on  the  harness  of  this  world's 
toil,  arose  from  the  spirituality  of  his 
frame  of  mind  ...  I  believe  his  mind  was 
in  Heaven,  wheresoever  he  corporeally 
existed."  He  was  laid  under  the  chancel 


of  ancient  St.  Michael's  at  Southampton, 
with  Johnson's  fond  benison,  "  Be  my 
soul  with  Langton's !"  inscribed  on  the 
marble  tablet  above  him.*  The  Rev. 
John  Wooll  of  Midhurst,  Joseph  War- 
ton's  editor,  was  one  of  the  few  present 
at  the  funeral  ceremony,  and  he  leaves 
us  to  infer  that  it  had  a  rather  neglectful 
privacy,  not,  indeed,  out  of  keeping  with 
the  "godly,  righteous,  and  sober  life"  it 
closed.  Langton's  will,  drawn  up  in  the 
June  of  1800,  and  preserved  in  Somer 
set  House,  devised  to  the  sole  execu 
trix,  his  "dear  wife,"  who  outlived  him 
by  nearly  twenty  years,  his  real  and  per 
sonal  estate,  his  books,  his  wines,  his 
prints,  his  horses,  and,  as  a  gift  particu 
larly  pretty,  his  right  of  navigation  in  the 
river  Wey.  George  Langton  was  sepa 
rately  provided  for,  but  there  were  some 
;£8ooo  for  the  eight  younger  children. 
The  document  is  crowded  with  technical 
details,  and  very  long;  and  the  manifest 
inference,  on  the  whole,  is  that  the  dear 

*  The  church  has  since  been  "restored,"  and  the  fine 
epitaph  is  now  (1890)  "skyed"  on  the  south  wall  of  the 
nave. 


223 


squire's  affairs  were  in  a  prodigious  tan 
gle.  There  is  no  wish  expressed  concern 
ing  his  burial,  and,  what  is  more  curious, 
there  are  no  Christian  formulas  for  the 
committal  of  the  antmula  vagula  blan- 
dula :  a  lack  perhaps  not  to  be  wondered 
at  in  Beauclerk's  concise  testament,  but 
somewhat  notable  in  the  case  of  a  person 
who  certainly  had  a  soul. 

So  went  Beauclerk  first  of  the  three, 
Langton  last,  with  the  good  ghost  still 
between  them,  as  he  in  his  homespun, 
they  in  their  flowered  velvet,  had  walked 
many  a  year  together  on  this  earth.  The 
old  companionship  had  undergone  some 
sorry  changes  ere  it  fell  utterly  to  dust  and 
ashes.  Its  happy  prime  had  been  in  the 
Oxford  "  Longs,"  when  the  Doctor  hu 
mored  his  lads,  and  tented  under  their 
roofs,  plucking  flowers  at  one  house,  and 
romping  with  dogs  at  the  other;  or  in 
1764,  at  the  starting  of  the  immortal 
Club,  when  the  two  of  its  founders,  who 
had  no  valid  or  pretended  claim  to 
celebrity,  perched  on  the  sills  like  useful 
genii,  with  a  mission  to  overrule  slug 
gish  melancholy,  and  renew  the  sparkle 


224 


in  abstracted  eyes.  How  supereminently 
they  did  what  they  chose  to  do,  and  what 
vagaries  they  roused  out  of  Johnson's  pro 
found  hypochondria  !  Did  not  Topham 
Beauclerk's  mother  once  have  to  reprove 
that  august  author  for  a  suggestion  to 
seize  some  pleasure-grounds  which  they 
were  passing  in  a  carriage  ?  "  Putting 
such  things  into  young  people's  heads !" 
said  she.  Where  could  the  innocent 
Beauclerk's  elbow  have  been  at  that 
moment,  contrary  to  the  canons  of  po 
lite  society,  but  in  the  innocent  Langton's 
ribs?  The  gray  reprobate,  so  censured, 
explained  to  Boswell :  "  Lady  Beauclerk 
has  no  notion  of  a  joke,  sir!  She  came 
late  into  life,  and  has  a  mighty  unplia- 
ble  understanding."  Who  can  forget  the 
Doctor's  visit  to  Beauclerk  at  Windsor, 
when,  falling  into  the  clutches  of  that 
gamesome  and  ungodly  youth,  he  was 
beguiled  from  church -going  of  a  fine 
Sunday  morning,  and  strolled  about  out 
side,  talking  and  laughing  during  sermon- 
time,  and  finally  spread  himself  at  length 
on  a  mossy  tomb,  only  to  be  told,  with  a 
giggle  and  a  pleased  rub  of  the  hands, 


225 


that  he  was  as  bad  as  Hogarth's  Idle 
Apprentice?  Or  the  other  visit  in  the 
north,  when,  after  ceremoniously  reliev 
ing  his  pockets  of  keys,  knife,  pencil,  and 
purse,  Samuel  Johnson,  LL.D.,  deliber 
ately  rolled  down  a  hill,  and  landed,  be- 
tumbled  out  of  all  recognition,  at  the 
bottom  ?  Langton  had  tried  to  dissuade 
him,  for  the  incline  was  very  steep,  and 
the  candidate  scarcely  of  the  requisite 
suppleness.  "  Oh,  but  I  haven't  had  a  roll 
for  such  a  long  time !"  pleaded  his  unan 
swerable  big  guest. 

Best  of  all,  we  have  the  history  of 
that  memorable  morning  when  Beauclerk 
and  Langton,  having  supped  together  at 
a  city  tavern,  roused  Johnson  at  three 
o'clock  at  his  Inner  Temple  Lane  Cham 
bers,  and  brought  him  to  the  door,  fear 
ful  but  aggressive,  in  his  shirt  and  his  lit 
tle  dark  wig,  and  his  slippers  down  at  the 
heels,  armed  with  a  poker.  "  What !  and 
is  it  YOU  ?  Faith,  I'll  have  a  frisk  with 
you,  ye  young  dogs!"  We  have  visions 
of  the  Covent  Garden  inn,  and  the  great 
brimming  bowl,  with  Lord  Lansdowne's 
drinking-song  for  grace ;  the  hucksters 


226 


and  fruiterers  staring  at  the  strange  cen 
tral  figure,  always  sure  to  gather  a  mob, 
even  during  the  moment  he  would  stand 
by  a  lady's  coach-door  in  Fleet  Street ; 
the  merry  boat  going  its  way  by  oar  to 
Billingsgate,  its  mad  crew  bantering  the 
watermen  on  the  river  ;  and  two  of  the 
roisterers  (equally  wild,  despite  a  little 
chronological  disparity  of  thirty  years  or 
so)  scolding  the  other  for  hastening  off, 
on  an  afternoon  appointment,  "to  dine 
with  wretched  unidea'd  girls!"  What 
golden  vagabondism  !  "  I  heard  of  your 
frolic  t'other  night ;  you'll  be  in  The 
Chronicle  !  ....  I  shall  have  my  old  friend 
to  bail  out  of  the  round -house !"  said 
Garrick.  "  As  for  Garrick,  sirs,"  tittered 
the  pious  Johnson  aside  to  his  accom 
plices,  "  he  dare  not  do  such  a  thing. 
His  wife  would  not  let  him!"  All  this 
mirth  and  whim  sweetened  the  Doctor's 
heavy  life.  He  had  other  intimates,  oth 
er  disciples.  But  these  were  Gay  Heart 
and  Gentle  Heart,  who  drove  his  own 
blue -devils  away  with  their  idolatrous 
devotion,  and  whose  bearing  towards  him 
stands  ever  as  the  best  possible  corrobo- 


227 


ration  of  his  great  and  warm  nature. 
With  him  and  for  him,  they  so  fill  the 
air  of  the  time  that  to  whomsoever  has 
but  thought  of  them  that  hour,  London 
must  seem  lonely  without  their  idyllic 
figures. 

— "  Our  day  is  gone  : 
Clouds,  dews,  and  dangers  come  ;  our  deeds  are  done." 

There  are  gods  as  good  for  the  after- 
years ;  but  Odin  is  down,  and  his  pair  of 
unreturning  birds  have  flown  west  and 
east. 


V 
WILLIAM    HAZLITT 

1778-1830 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 

HE  titles  of  William  Hazlitt's 
first  books  bear  witness  to 
the  ethic  spirit  in  which  he 
began  life.  From  his  belov 
ed  father,  an  Irish  dissenting 
minister,  he  inherited  his  unworldliness, 
his  obstinacy,  his  love  of  inexpedient 
truth,  and  his  interest  in  the  emancipa 
tion  and  well-being  of  his  fellow-creat 
ures.  Bred  in  an  air  of  seriousness  and 
integrity,  the  child  of  twelve  announced 
by  post  that  he  had  spent  "  a  very  agree 
able  day  "  reading  one  hundred  and  sixty 
pages  of  Priestley,  and  hearing  two  good 
sermons.  A  year  later  he  appeared,  un 
der  a  Greek  signature,  in  The  Shrewsbury 
Chronicle,  protesting  against  sectarian  in 
justice  ;  an  infant  herald  in  the  great 
modern  movement  towards  fair  play. 
The  roll  of  the  portentous  periods  must 


232 


have  made  his  father  weep  for  pride  and 
diversion.  William's  young  head  was 
full  of  moral  philosophy  and  jurispru 
dence,  and  he  had  what  is  the  top  of 
luxury  for  one  of  his  temperament :  per 
fect  license  of  mental  growth.  Alone 
with  his  parents  (one  of  whom  was  al 
ways  a  student  and  a  recluse),  and  for 
the  most  part  without  the  school-fellows 
who  are  likely  to  adjust  the  perilous  ef 
fects  of  books,  he  became  choked  with 
theories,  and  thought  more  of  the  need 
ful  repeal  of  the  Test  Act  than  of  his 
breakfast.  He  found  his  way  at  fourteen 
into  the  Unitarian  College  at  Hackney, 
but  eventually  broke  from  his  traces, 
saving  his  fatherland  from  the  spectacle 
of  a  unique  theologian.  During  the  year 
1795  ne  saw  the  pictures  at  Burleigh 
House,  and  began  to  live.  Desultory 
but  deep  study,  at  home  and  near  home, 
took  up  the  time  before  his  first  leisurely 
choice  of  a  profession.  His  lonely  brood- 
ings,  his  early  love  for  Miss  Railton,  his 
four  enthusiastic  months  at  the  Louvre, 
his  silent  friendship  with  Wordsworth 
and  with  Coleridge  ;  the  country  walks, 


233 


the  pages  and  prints,  the  glad  tears  of  his 
youth, — these  were  the  fantastic  tutors 
which  formed  him ;  nor  had  he  ever 
much  respect  for  any  other  kind  of  train 
ing.  The  lesson  he  prized  most  was  the 
lesson  straight  from  life  and  nature.  He 
comments,  tartly  enough,  on  the  sophism 
that  observation  in  idleness,  or  the  growth 
of  bodily  skill  and  social  address,  or  the 
search  for  the  secret  of  honorable  power 
over  people,  is  not  in  any  wise  to  be  ac 
counted  as  learning.  Montaigne,  who 
was  in  Hazlitt's  ancestral  line,  was  of  this 
mind  :  "  Ce  quon  s$ait  droictement,  on  en 
dispose  sans  regarder  au  patron,  sans  tour- 
ner  les  yeulx  vers  son  livre"  Hazlitt  in 
sists,  too,  that  learned  men  are  but  "  the 
cisterns,  not  the  fountain-heads,  of  knowl 
edge."  He  hated  the  schoolmaster,  and 
has  said  as  witty  things  of  him  as  Mr. 
Oscar  Wilde.  Yet  his  little  portrait-study 
of  the  mere  book-worm,  in  The  Conversa 
tion  of  Authors,  has  a  never-to-be-forgot 
ten  sweetness.  His  mental  nurture  was 
serviceable ;  it  was  of  his  own  choosing ; 
it  fitted  him  for  the  work  he  had  to  do. 
Like  Marcus  Aurelius,  he  congratulated 


himself  that  he  did  not  squander  his 
youth  "  chopping  logic  and  scouring  the 
heavens."  Hazlitt  once  entered  upon  an 
Inquiry  'whether  the  Fine  Arts  are  pro 
moted  by  Academies ;  the  answer,  from 
him,  is  readily  anticipated. 

"If  arts  and  schools  reply," 

he  might  have  added, — and  it  is  a  won 
der  that  he  did  not, 

"Give  arts  and  schools  the  lie!" 

Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  made  a  famous 
essay  on  the  same  topic,  and  some  read 
ers  recollect  distinctly  that  his  verdict, 
for  England,  would  be  in  the  affirm 
ative,  whereas  it  was  no  such  matter. 
Now,  no  man  can  conceive  of  Hazlitt 
presenting  both  sides  of  a  case  so  im 
partially  as  to  be  misunderstood,  espe 
cially  upon  so  vital  a  subject.  He  past 
ured,  he  was  not  trained  ;  and  therefore 
he  would  have  you  and  your  children's 
children  scoff  at  universities.  Indeed, 
though  the  boy's  lack  of  discipline  told 
on  him  all  through  life,  his  reader  re 
grets  nothing  else  which  a  university 


could  have  given  him,  except,  perhaps, 
milder  manners.  Hazlitt  was  perfectly 
aware  that  he  had  too  little  general 
knowledge ;  but  general  knowledge  he 
did  not  consider  so  good  a  tool  for  his 
self -set  task  in  life  as  a  persistent,  pas 
sionate  study  of  one  or  two  subjects. 
Again,  he  is  pleased  to  conjecture,  with 
bluntness,  that  if  he  had  learned  more  he 
would  have  thought  less.  (Perhaps  he 
was  the  friend  cited  by  Elia,  who  gave 
up  reading  to  improve  his  originality ! 
He  was  certainly  useful  to  Elia  in  deli 
cate  and  curious  ways :  a  whole  vein  of 
rich  eccentricity  ready  for  that  sweet 
philosopher's  working.)  Hear  him  pro 
nouncing  upon  himself  at  the  very  end  : 
"  I  have,  then,  given  proof  of  some  talent 
and  more  honesty ;  if  there  is  haste  and 
want  of  method,  there  is  no  common 
place,  nor  a  line  that  licks  the  dust.  If 
I  do  not  appear  to  more  advantage,  I 
at  least  appear  such  as  I  am."  Divorce 
that  remark  and  the  truth  of  it  from 
Hazlitt,  and  there  is  no  Hazlitt  left.  He 
stood  for  individualism.  He  wrote  from 
what  was,  in  the  highest  degree  for  his 


purpose,  a  full  mind,  and  with  that  blame 
less  conscious  superiority  which  a  full 
mind  mast  needs  feel  in  this  empty 
world.  His  whole  intellectual  stand  is 
taken  on  the  positive  and  concrete  side 
of  things.  He  has  a  fine  barbaric 
cocksureness;  he  dwells  not  with  al- 
thoughs  and  neverthelesses,  like  Mr. 
Symonds  and  Mr.  Saintsbury.  "  I  am 
not  one  of  those,"  he  says,  concerning 
Edmund  Kean's  first  appearance  in  Lon 
don,  "  who,  when  they  see  the  sun  break 
ing  from  behind  a  cloud,  stop  to  inquire 
whether  it  is  the  moon."  And  he  takes 
enormous  interest  in  his  own  promulga 
tion,  because  it  is  inevitably  not  only 
what  he  thinks,  but  what  he  has  long 
thought.  He  delivers  an  opinion  with  the 
air  proper  to  a  host  who  is  master  of  a 
vineyard,  and  can  furnish  name  and  date 
to  every  flagon  he  unseals. 

None  of  Hazlitt's  energies  went  to 
waste  :  he  earned  his  soul  early,  and  how 
proud  he  was  of  the  possession  !  Retro 
spection  became  his  forward  horizon.  He 
was  all  aglow  at  the  thought  of  that 
beatific  yesterday ;  in  his  every  mood 


237 


"the  years  that  are  fled  knock  at  the 
door,  and  enter."  He  struggled  no  more 
thereafter,  having  fixed  his  beliefs  and 
found  his  voice.  He  saw  no  occasion  to 
change.  "As  to  myself,"  he  wrote  at 
fifty,  referring  to  Lamb's  well-known  "  sur 
feits  of  admiration  "  concerning  some  ob 
jects  once  adored,  "  as  to  myself,  any  one 
knows  where  to  have  me !"  He  adds : 
"  In  matters  of  taste  and  feeling,  one 
proof  that  my  conclusions  have  not  been 
quite  shallow  or  hasty  is  the  circumstance 
of  their  having  been  lasting.  . .  .  This  con 
tinuity  of  impression  is  the  only  thing  on 
which  I  pride  myself."  A  fine  saying  in 
the  Boswell  Redivivus,  attributed  to  Opie, 
is  as  clearly  expressed  elsewhere  by  Haz- 
litt's  self:  that  a  man  in  his  lifetime  can 
do  but  one  thing;  that  there  is  but  one 
effort  and  one  victory,  and  all  the  rest  is 
as  machinery  in  motion.  "  What  I  write 
costs  me  nothing,  but  it  cost  me  a  great 
deal  twenty  years  ago.  I  have  added  lit 
tle  to  my  stock  since  then,  and  taken  little 
from  it."  His  sensations,  latterly,  were 
"July  shoots,"  graftings  on  the  old  sap. 
It  is  his  boast  in  almost  his  final  essay 


238 


that  his  tenacious  brain  holds  fast  while 
the  planets  are  turning.  He  can  look  at 
a  child's  kite  in  heaven,  to  the  last,  with 
the  eyes.of  a  child  :  "  It  pulls  at  my  heart." 
His  conservative  habit,  however,  seem 
ed  to  teach  him  everything  by  inference. 
In  1821,  familiar  with  none  of  the  elder 
dramatists  save  Shakespeare,  he  borrowed 
their  folios,  and  shut  himself  up  for  six 
weeks  at  Winterslow  Hut  on  Salisbury 
Plain.  He  returned  to  town  steeped  in 
his  theme,  and  with  the  beautiful  and 
authoritative  Lectures  written.  Appre 
ciation  of  the  great  Elizabethans  is  com 
mon  enough  now ;  seventy  years  ago, 
propagated  by  Lamb's  Specimens,  1808, 
it  was  the  business  only  of  adventurers 
and  pioneers.  Here  is  a  critic  indeed 
who,  without  a  suspicion  of  audacity, 
can  arise  as  a  stranger  to  arraign  the 
Arcadia,  and  "shake  hands  with  Sig- 
nor  Orlando  Friscobaldo  as  the  oldest 
acquaintance  "  he  has  !  The  thing,  ex 
ceptional  as  it  was,  proves  that  William 
Hazlitt  knew  his  resources.  His  devoted 
friend  Patmore  attributes  his  "  unpre 
meditated  art,"  terse,  profound,  original, 


239 


and  always  moving  at  full  speed,  to  two 
facts :  "  first,  that  he  never,  by  choice, 
wrote  on  any  topic  or  question  in  which 
he  did  not,  for  some  reason  or  other,  feel 
a  deep  personal  interest ;  and,  secondly, 
because  on  all  questions  on  which  he  did 
so  feel,  he  had  thought,  meditated,  and 
pondered,  in  the  silence  and  solitude  of 
his  own  heart,  for  years  and  years  before 
he  ever  contemplated  doing  more  than 
thinking  of  them."  Unlike  a  distin 
guished  historian,  who,  accord  ing  to  Hor 
ace  Walpole,  "  never  understood  anything 
until  he  had  written  of  it,"  Hazlitt  brought 
to  his  every  task  a  mind  violently  made 
up,  and  a  vocation  for  special  pleading 
which  nothing  could  withstand. 

Sure  as  he  is,  he  means  to  be  nobody's 
hired  guide  :  a  resolve  for  which  the  gen 
eral  reader  cannot  be  too  grateful.  In 
wilful  and  mellow  study  of  what  chance 
threw  in  his  way  his  strength  grew,  and 
his  limitations  with  it.  It  is  small  won 
der  that  he  hated  schoolmasters,  and  the 
public  which  expected  of  him  schoolmas 
ter  platitudes.  He  had  a  pride  of  intellect 
not  unlike  Rousseau's,  and  he  seems  to 


have  had  ever  in  mind  Rousseau's  cardi 
nal  declaration  that  if  he  were  no  better 
than  other  men,  he  was  at  least  different 
from  them.  Hazlitt  defined  his  own 
functions  with  proper  haughtiness,  in  the 
amusing  apology  of  Capacity  and  Genius. 
"  I  was  once  applied  to,  in  a  delicate 
emergency,  to  write  an  article  on  a  dif 
ficult  subject  for  an  encyclopaedia;  and 
was  advised  to  take  time,  and  give  it  a 
systematic  and  scientific  form;  to  avail 
myself  of  all  the  knowledge  that  was  to 
be  obtained  upon  the  subject,  and  arrange 
it  with  clearness  and  method.  I  made 
answer  that,  as  to  the  first,  I  had  taken 
time  to  do  all  that  I  ever  pretended  to 
do,  as  I  had  thought  incessantly  on  dif 
ferent  matters  for  twenty  years  of  my 
life  ;  that  I  had  no  particular  knowledge 
of  the  subject  in  question,  and  no  head 
for  arrangement ;  that  the  utmost  I  could 
do,  in  such  a  case,  would  be,  when  a  sys 
tematic  and  scientific  article  was  pre 
pared,  to  write  marginal  notes  upon  it, 
to  insert  a  remark  or  illustration  of  my 
own  (not  to  be  found  in  former  encyclo 
paedias  !)  or  to  suggest  a  better  definition 


than  had  been  offered  in  the  text."*  Such 
independence  nobly  became  him,  and 
none  the  less  because  it  kept  him  poor. 
But  in  the  course  of  time,  he  had  to  work, 
and  keep  on  working,  under  wretched 
disadvantages.  He  had  spurts  of  revolt, 
after  long  experience  of  compulsory  com 
position  ;  his  darling  wish  in  1822  (con 
fided  to  his  wife,  of  all  persons)  being 
that  he  "could  marry  some  woman  with  a 
good  fortune,  that  he  might  not  be  under 
the  necessity  of  writing  another  line !" 

There  was  in  him  absolutely  nothing 
of  the  antiquary  and  the  scholar,  as  the 
modern  world  understands  those  most 
serviceable  gentlemen.  He  was  a  "sur 
veyor,"  as  he  said,  erroneously,  of  Bacon. 
He  was  continuously  drawn  into  the  by 
way,  and  ever  in  search  of  the  accidental, 
the  occult ;  he  lusted,  like  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  to  find  the  great  meanings  of 
minor  things.  The  "  pompous  big-wigs  " 
of  his  day,  as  Thackeray  called  them, 
hated  his  informality,  his  boldly  novel 
methods,  his  vivacity  and  enthusiasm. 

*  The  article  on   The  Fine  A  rts  in  the  Encyclopedia 
Britannica  is  signed  "  W.  H." 
16 


242 


He  had,  within  proscribed  bounds,  an 
exquisite  and  affectionate  curiosity,  like 
that  of  the  Renaissance.  "  The  invention 
of  a  fable  is  to  me  the  most  enviable  ex 
ertion  of  human  genius :  it  is  the  discov 
ery  of  a  truth  to  which  there  is  no  clew, 
and  which,  when  once  found  out,  can 
never  be  forgotten."  "  If  the  world  were 
good  for  nothing  else,  it  would  be  a  fine 
subject  for  speculation."  It  is  his  delib 
erate  dictum  that  it  were  "  worth  a  life  " 
to  sit  down  by  an  Italian  wayside,  and 
work  out  the  reason  why  the  Italian  su 
premacy  in  art  has  always  been  along  the 
line  of  color,  not  along  the  line  of  form. 

He  depended  so  entirely  upon  his  mem 
ory  that  those  who  knew  him  best  say 
that  he  never  took  notes,  neither  in  gal 
lery,  library,  nor  theatre ;  yet  his  inaccu 
racies  are  few  and  slight,*  and  he  must 
have  secured  by  this  habit  a  prodigious 

*  Mrs.  Hazlitt  the  first,  it  would  appear,  undertook  to  \ 
verify  her  husband's  quotations  for  him.  His  favorite 
metaphor,  "  Like  the  tide  which  flows  on  to  the  Propontic, 
and  knows  no  ebb,"  must  have  passed  many  times  under 
her  eye.  Any  reference  to  Othello  himself,  in  the  great 
scene  of  Act  III.,  would  have  shown  four  lines  for  Will 
iam  Hazlitt's  explicit  one. 


243 


freedom  and  luxury  in  the  act  of  writing. 
He  would  rather  stumble  than  walk  ac 
cording  to  rule ;  and  he  was  so  pleasant 
ly  beguiled  with  some  of  his  own  images 
(that,  for  instance,  of  immortality  the 
bride  of  the  youthful  spirit,  and  of  the 
procession  of  camels  seen  across  the  dis 
tance  of  three  thousand  years)  that  he 
reiterates  them  upon  every  fit  occasion. 
He  cites,  twice  and  thrice,  the  same  pas 
sages  from  the  Elizabethans.  He  is  a 
masterly  quoter,  and  lingers  like  a  suitor 
upon  the  borders  of  old  poesy.  His  in 
fallibility,  like  the  Pope's,  is  of  narrow 
scope  and  nicely  defined.  When  he 
steps  beyond  his  accustomed  tracks, 
which  is  seldom,  his  vagaries  are  enter 
taining.  You  may  account  for  his  dec 
laration  that  Thomas  Warton's  sonnets 
rank  as  the  very  best  in  the  language,  by 
reflecting  that  he  dealt  not  in  sonnets 
and  knew  nothing  of  them;  if  he  prefer 
Hercules  Raging  to  any  other  Greek  trage 
dy,  it  is  collateral  proof  that  he  was  no 
wide-travelled  Grecian,  nor  even  Euripi- 
deian;  when  he  gives  his  distinguished 
preference  to  Shakespeare's  Helena,  there 


244 


is  small  need  of  adding  that  Mr.  Hazlitt, 
albeit  with  an  affectionate  friendship  for 
Mary  Lamb,  with  a  mother,  a  sister,  a 
dynasty  of  sweethearts,  and  two  wives, 
was  notoriously  unlearned  in  women.* 

The  events  of  his  life  count  for  so  little 
that  they  are  hardly  worth  recording. 
He  was  born  into  a  high-principled  and 
intelligent  family,  at  Mitre  Lane,  Maid- 
stone,  Kent,  on  the  loth  of  April,  in  the 
year  1778.  His  infancy  was  passed  there 
and  in  Ireland,  his  boyhood  in  New  Eng 
land  and  in  Shropshire.  Prior  to  a  long 
visit  to  Paris,  where  he  made  some  noble 
copies  of  Titian,  he  came  in  1802  to 
Bloomsbury,  where  his  elder  brother 
John,  an  advanced  Liberal  in  politics  and 
an  excellent  miniature-painter,  had  a  stu 
dio  ;  and  here  he  worked  at  art  for  sev 
eral  joyous  years,  finally  abandoning  it 
for  literature.  The  portraits  he  painted, 
utterly  lacking  in  grace,  are  fraught  with 

*  Some  of  Hazlitt's  comments  on  women  are  full  of  un 
conscious  humor.  In  Great  and  Little  Things  he  admits 
being  snubbed  by  the  fair,  and  adds  with  grandiloquence  : 
"  I  took  a  pride  in  my  disgrace,  and  concluded  that  I  had 
elsewhere  my  inheritance!" 


power  and  meaning ;  few  of  these  are 
extant,  thanks  to  the  fading  and  crack 
ing  pigments  of  the  modern  schools. 
The  old  Manchester  woman  in  shadow, 
done  in  1803,  and  the  head  of  his  father, 
dating  from  a  twelvemonth  later  (two 
things  to  which  Hazlitt  makes  memora 
ble  reference  in  his  essays),  are  no  longer 
distinguishable,  save  to  a  very  patient 
eye,  upon  the  blackened  canvases  in  his 
grandson's  possession.  The  picture  of 
the  child  Hartley  Coleridge,  begun  at  the 
Lakes  in  1802,  has  perished  from  the 
damp;  that  of  Charles  Lamb  in  the  Ve 
netian  doublet  survives  since  1804,  in  its 
serious  and  primitive  browns,*  as  the 
best-known  example  of  an  English  artist 
not  in  the  catalogues.  Its  historic  value, 
however,  is  not  superior  to  that  of  two 
portraits  of  Hazlitt  himself:  one  a  study 
in  strong  light  and  shade,  with  a  wreath 
upon  the  head,  now  very  much  time- 
eaten  ;  and  another  representing  him  at 
about  the  age  of  twenty-five,  with  a  three- 
quarters  front  face  looking  over  the  right 

*  In  the  National  Portrait  Gallery,  London. 


246 


shoulder,  which  appeals  to  the  spectator 
like  spoken  truth.  It  is  all  but  void  of 
the  beauty  characterizing  the  striking 
Bewick  head  (especially  as  retouched  and 
reproduced  in  Mr.  Alexander  Ireland's 
valuable  book  of  1889,  which  is  a  sort  of 
Hazlitt  anthology),  and  characterizing,  no 
less,  John  Hazlitt's  charming  miniatures 
of  William  at  five  and  at  thirteen  ;  there 
fore  it  can  deal  in  no  self-flattery.  Fort 
unately,  we  have  from  the  hand  which 
knew  him  best  the  lank,  odd,  reserved 
youth  in  whom  great  possibilities  were 
brewing;  thought  and  will  predominate 
in  this  portrait,  and  it  expresses  the  sin 
cere  soul.  It  would  be  idle  to  criticise 
the  technique  of  a  work  disowned  by  its 
author.  Hazlitt  had,  as  we  know  from 
much  testimony,  a  most  interesting  and 
perplexing  face,  with  the  magnificent 
brow  almost  belied  by  shifting  eyes,  and 
the  petulance  and  distrust  of  the  mouth 
and  chin ;  but  a  face  prepossessing  on 
the  whole  from  the  clear  marble  of  his 
complexion,*  remarkable  in  a  land  of 

*  Blackivoo(Vs,  in  the  charming  fashion  of  the  time, 
repeatedly   refers   to   Hazlitt's   "pimples";  and   Byron 


247 


ruddy  cheeks.  His  lonely  and  peculiar 
life  lent  him  its  own  hue  ;  the  eager  look 
of  one  indeed  a  sufferer,  but  with  the 
light  full  upon  him  of  visions  and  of 
dreams : 

"  Chi  pallido  si  fece  sotto  I'ombra 
Si  di  Parnaso,  o  bevve  in  sua  cisterna?" 

In  1798  Hazlitt  had  his  immortal  meet 
ing  at  Wem  with  Samuel  Taylor  Cole 
ridge.  He  described  himself  at  this  pe 
riod  as  "dumb,  inarticulate,  helpless,  like 
a  worm  by  the  wayside,"  striving  in  vain 
to  put  on  paper  the  thoughts  which  op 
pressed  him,  shedding  tears  of  vexation 
at  his  inability,  and  feeling  happy  if  in 
eight  years  he  could  write  as  many  pages. 
The  abiding  influence  of  his  First  Poet 
he  has  acknowledged  in  an  imperishable 
chapter.  For  a  long  while  he  still  kept 
in  "the  o'erdarkened  ways  "  of  Malthus 
and  Tucker,  or  in  the  shadow,  dear  to 

credited  and  supplemented  the  allegation.  Hazlitt  him 
self  says  somewhere  "that  to  lay  a  thing  to  a  person's 
charge  from  which  he  is  perfectly  free,  shows  spirit  and 
invention  !"  The  calumny  is  not  worth  mention,  except 
as  a  fair  specimen  of  the  journalistic  methods  against  which 
literary  men  had  to  contend  some  eighty  years  ago.. 


him,  of  Hobbes;  but  in  1817  the  flood 
gates  broke,  the  pure  current  gushed  out; 
and  in  the  Characters  of  Shakespeare  s 
Plays  we  have  the  primal  pledge  of  Haz- 
litt  as  we  know  him,  "such  as  had  never 
been  before  him,  such  as  will  never  be 
again."  From  a  "  dumbness  "  and  dif 
fidence  extreme,  he  developed  into  the 
readiest  of  writers ;  his  sudden  pages, 
year  after  year,  transcribed  in  his  slant 
large  hand,  went  to  the  printers  rapidly 
and  at  first  draft.  The  longer  he  used 
his  dedicated  pen,  the  freer,  the  brighter, 
the  serener  it  grew.  In  the  fourteen  or 
fifteen  of  his  books  which  deal  with  gen 
ius  and  the  conduct  of  life,  there  is, 
throughout,  an  indescribable  unaffected 
zest,  a  self -same  and  unwavering  certi 
tude  of  handling.  Once  he  learned  his 
trade,  he  gave  himself  a  large  field  and 
an  easy  rein.  He  never  warmed  towards 
a  subject  chosen  for  him.  His  conver 
sation  was  non-professional.  He  consid 
ered  a  discussion  as  to  the  likelihood  of 
the  weather's  holding  up  for  to-morrow 
as  "the  end  and  privilege  of  a  life  of 
study." 


In  London,  as  soon  as  he  had  aban 
doned  painting,  he  became  a  parliamen 
tary  reporter,  and  began  to  lecture  on 
the  English  philosophers  and  metaphy 
sicians.  He  furnished  his  famous  dra 
matic  criticisms  to  The  Morning  Chron 
icle,  The  Champion,  The  Examiner,  and 
The  Times,  and  he  acted  later  as  home 
editor  of  The  Liberal.  He  married,  on 
May-day  of  1808,  Miss  Sarah  Stoddart, 
who  owned  the  property  near  Salisbury 
where  he  afterwards  spent  melancholy 
years  alone.  He  fulfilled  one  human  duty 
perfectly,  for  he  loved  and  reared  his  son. 
A  most  singular  infatuation  for  the  un 
lovely  daughter  of  his  landlady;  a  sec 
ond  inauspicious  marriage  in  1824  with 
a  Mrs.  Isabella  Bridgwater ;  a  prolonged 
journey  on  the  Continent ;  the  failure  of 
the  publishers  of  his  Life  of  Napoleon, 
which  thus  in  his  needful  days  brought 
him  no  competence;  a  long  illness  hero 
ically  borne,  and  a  burial  in  the  parish 
churchyard  of  St.  Anne's,  under  a  head 
stone  raised,  in  a  romantic  remorse  after 
an  estrangement,  by  Charles  Wells,  the 
author  of  Joseph  and  his  Brethren, — these 


250 


round  out  the  meagre  details  of  Hazlitt's 
life.  He  died  in  the  arms  of  his  son  and 
of  his  old  friend  Charles  Lamb,*  on  the 
1 8th  of  September,  1830,  at  6  Frith 
Street,  Soho. 

His  domestic  experiences,  indeed,  had 
been  nearly  as  extraordinary  as  Shelley's. 
Sarah  Walker,  of  No.  9  Southampton 
Buildings,  is  a  sort  of  burlesque  counter 
part  of  that  other  "spouse,  sister,  angel," 
Emilia  Viviani.  Nothing  in  literary  his 
tory  is  much  funnier  than  Mr.  Hazlitt's 
kind  assistance  to  Mrs.  Hazlitt  in  secur 
ing  her  divorce,  going  to  visit  her  at 
Edinburgh,  and  supplying  funds  and  ad 
vice  over  the  teacups,  while  the  process 
was  pending,  unless  it  be  Shelley's  ingen 
uous  invitation  to  his  deserted  young 
wife  to  come  and  dwell  forever  with 
himself  and  Mary!  The  silent  dramatic 
withdrawal  of  the  second  Mrs.  Hazlitt, 
the  well-to-do  relict  of  a  colonel,  who  is 


*  Lamb  had  been  his  groomsman  twenty-two  years  be 
fore,  at  the  Church  of  St.  Andrew,  Holborn,  "and  like  to 
have  been  turned  out  several  times  during  the  ceremony  ; 
anything  awful  makes  me  laugh!"  as  he  confessed  in  a 
letter  to  Southey  in  1815. 


henceforth  swallowed  up  in  complete  ob 
livion,  is  a  feature  whose  like  is  missing 
in  Shelley's  romance.  Events  in  Hazlitt's 
path  were  not  many,  and  his  inner  ca 
lamities  seem  somehow  subordinated  to 
exterior  workings.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  to  the  French  Revolution  and 
the  white  heat  of  hope  it  diffused  over 
Europe  he  owed  the  renewal  of  the  very 
impetus  within  him  :  his  moral  probity, 
his  mental  vigor,  and  his  physical  cheer. 
His  measure  of  men  and  things  was  fixed 
by  its  standard.  Other  enthusiasts  wa 
vered  and  went  back  to  the  flesh-pots  of 
Egypt,  but  not  he.  Et  cuncta  terrarum 
subacta  prater  atrocem  animum  Catoms. 
Towards  the  grandest  inconsistency  this 
world  has  seen,  he  bore  himself  with  a 
consistency  nothing  less  than  touching. 
Everywhere,  always,  as  a  friend  who  un 
derstood  him  well  reminds  a  later  gen 
eration,  "  Hazlitt  was  the  only  man  of 
letters  in  England  who  dared  openly  to 
stand  by  the  French  Revolution,  through 
good  and  evil  report,  and  who  had  the 
magnanimity  never  to  turn  his  back  upon 
its  child  and  champion."  The  ruin  of 


252 


Napoleon,  and  the  final  news  that  "the 
hunter  of  greatness  and  of  glory  was  him 
self  a  shade,"  meant  more  to  him  than 
the  relinquishment  of  his  early  and  cher 
ished  art,  or  the  fading  of  the  long  dream 
that  his  heart  "should  find  a  heart  to 
speak  to."  On  his  last  autumn  after 
noon,  he  said  what  no  one  else  would 
have  dared  to  say  for  him  :  "  I  have  had 
a  happy  life."  Such  it  was,  if  we  are  to 
compute  happiness  by  souls,  and  not  by 
the  incidents  which  befall  them.  What 
were  the  things  which  atoned  to  this  re 
former  for  the  curse  of  a  mind  too  sen 
tient,  a  heart  never  far  from  breaking? 
Over  and  above  all  amended  and  amend 
ing  abuses,  the  memory  of  the  Rem- 
brandts  on  the  walls  of  Burleigh  House ; 
the  waving  crest  of  the  Tuderley  woods ; 
the  sky,  the  turf,  "a  winding  road,  and 
a  three -hours'  march  to  dinner";  the 
impersonator  of  Richard  III.  most  to 
his  mind,  who  lighted  the  stage,  "and 
fought  as  if  drunk  with  wounds";  and 
the  figure  (how  pastoral  arid  tender !) 
of  the  shepherd  -  boy  bringing  a  nest 
for  his  young  mistress's  sky -lark,  "not 


253 


doomed  to  dip  his  wings  in  the  dap 
pled  dawn."  What  heresy  to  the  an 
cients  would  be  this  creed  of  poetic 
compensation  !  Montesquieu  adhered  to 
it;  but  hardly  from  baffled  and  impas 
sioned  Hazlitt,  dying  in  his  prime,  would 
the  avowal  have  been  expected.  Yet  he 
had  written  almost  always,  as  Jeffrey  saw, 
in  "a  happy  intoxication."  Like  the  sun 
dial,  in  one  of  the  most  charming  among 
his  miscellaneous  essays,  he  kept  count 
only  of  the  hours  of  joy. 

Hazlitt 's  erratic  levees  among  coffee 
house  wits  and  politicians,  his  slack  dress, 
his  rich  and  fitful  talk,  his  beautiful  fierce 
head,  go  to  make  up  any  accurate  im 
pression  of  the  man.  Mr.  P.  G.  Patmore 
has  drawn  him  for  us;  a  strange  portrait 
from  a  steady  hand  :  in  certain  moods 
"  an  effigy  of  silence,"  pale,  anxious,  ema 
ciated,  with  an  awful  look  ever  and  anon, 
like  the  thunder-cloud  in  a  clear  heaven, 
sweeping  over  his  features  with  still 
fury.*  He  was  so  much  at  the  mercy  of 

*  Orrery  had  seen  this  same  bitter  indignation  over 
whelm  Swift  at  times,  "  so  that  it  is  scarcely  possible  for 
human  features  to  carry  in  them  more  terror  and  aus 
terity." 


254 


an  excitable  and  extra-sensitive  organi 
zation  that  an  accidental  failure  to  re 
turn  his  salute  upon  the  street,  or,  above 
all,  the  gaze  of  a  servant  as  he  entered 
a  house,  plunged  him  into  an  excess  of 
wrath  and  misery.  Full,  at  other  times, 
of  scrupulous  good  faith  and  generosity, 
he  would,  under  the  stress  of  a  fancied 
hurt,  say  and  write  malicious  things  about 
those  he  most  honored.  He  must  have 
been  a  general  thorn  in  the  flesh,  for  he 
had  no  tact  whatever.  "  I  love  Henry," 
said  one  of  Thoreau's  friends,  "but  I  can 
not  like  him."  Shy,  splenetic,  with  Dry- 
den's  "  down  look,"  readier  to  give  than 
to  exchange,  Hazlitt  was  a  riddle  to  stran 
gers'  eyes.  His  deep  voice  seemed  at 
variance  with  his  gliding  step  and  his 
glance,  bright  but  sullen  ;  his  hand  felt 
as  if  it  were  the  limp,  cold  fin  of  a  fish, 
and  was  an  unlooked-for  accompaniment 
to  the  fiery  soul  warring  everywhere  with 
darkness,  and  drenched  in  altruism.  His 
habit  of  excessive  tea-drinking,  like  Dr. 
Johnson's,  was  to  keep  down  sad  thoughts. 
For  sixteen  years  before  he  died,  from 
the  day  on  which  he  formed  his  resolu- 


255 


tion,  Hazlitt  never  touched  spirits  of  any 
kind.  Profuse  of  money  when  he  had  it, 
he  lacked  heart,  says  Mr.  Patmore,  to  live 
well.  Wherever  he  dwelt  there  was  what 
Carlyle,  in  Hunt's  case,  called  "tinker- 
dom  ";  his  marriage,  and  his  residence 
under  the  august  roof  which  had  been 
Milton's,*  did  not  mend  matters  for  him. 
He  covered  the  walls  and  mantel-pieces 
of  London  landladies,  after  the  fashion 
of  the  French  bohemian  painters,  with 
samples  of  his  noblest  style ;  and  the 
savor  of  yesterday's  potions  of  strong  tea 
exhaled  into  their  curtains.  Never  was 
there,  despite  his  confessional  attitude,  so 
non  -  communicative  a  soul.  He  never 
corresponded  with  anybody ;  he  never 
would  walk  arm  in  arm  with  anybody ; 
he  never,  perhaps  from  horror  of  the 
"  patron  "  bogie,  dedicated  a  book  to  any 
body.  De  Quincey  knew  a  man  warmly 
disposed  towards  Hazlitt  who  learned  to 
shudder  and  dread  daggers  when  poor 
Hazlitt,  with  a  gesture  habitual  to  him, 

*  At  19  York  Street,  Westminster.  The  house,  with 
its  tablet  "To  the  Prince  of  Poets"  set  by  Hazlitt  him 
self,  was  destroyed  in  1877. 


thrust  his  right  hand  between  the  but 
tons  of  his  waistcoat!  And  he  once 
cheerfully  requested  of  a  cheerful  col 
league  :  "  Write  a  character  of  me  for  the 
next  number.  I  want  to  know  why  ev 
erybody  has  such  a  dislike  to  me."  As 
a  social  factor  he  was  something  atro 
cious.*  The  most  humane  of  men,  his 
suspicions  and  shyings  cut  him  off  com 
pletely  from  humanity.  The  base  war 
waged  upon  him  by  the  great  Tory  mag 
azines  could  not  have  affected  him  so 
deeply  that  it  changed  his  demeanor 
towards  his  fellows  ;  for  he  had  the  met- 


*  A  snappy  unpublished  letter  to  Hunt,  sold  among 
the  Hazlitt  papers  at  Sotheby,  Wilkinson  and  Hodge's,  in 
the  late  autumn  of  1893,  complains  bitterly  of  kind  Basil 
Montagu,  who  had  once  put  off  a  proffered  visit  from 
Hazlitt,  on  the  ground  that  a  party  of  other  guests  was 
expected.  The  deterred  one  was  naturally  wroth.  "Yet 
after  this,  I  am  not  to  look  at  him  a  little  in  abstracto  I 
This  is  what  has  soured  me  and  made  me  sick  of  friend 
ship  and  acquaintanceship."  Hazlitt  confounded  cause 
and  effect.  He  was  unwelcome  in  general  gatherings 
where  his  genius  was  unappreciated  ;  and  we  may  be  sure 
Montagu  was  sorry  for  it  when,  in  the  interests  of  concord, 
he  held  up  so  deprecating  and  inhospitable  a  hand.  But 
among  those  who  nursed  Hazlitt  in  his  last  illness,  Basil 
Montagu  was  not  the  least  loyal. 


257 


tie  of  a  paladin,  which  no  invective  could 
break.  But,  alas !  he  had  "  the  canker 
at  the  heart,"  which  is  no  fosterer  of 
"the  rose  upon  the  cheek." 

With  all  this  fever  and  heaviness  in 
Hazlitt's  blood,  he  had  a  hearty  laugh, 
musical  to  hear.  Haydon,  in  his  exag 
gerated  manner,  reports  an  uncharitable 
conversation  held  with  him  once  on  the 
subject  of  Leigh  Hunt  in  Italy,  during 
which  the  two  misconstruing  critics,  in 
their  great  glee,  "  made  more  noise  than 
all  the  coaches,  wagons,  and  carts  outside 
in  Piccadilly."  His  smile  was  singularly 
grave  and  sweet.  Mrs.  Shelley  wrote,  on 
coming  back  to  England,  in  her  widow 
hood,  and  finding  him  much  changed : 
"  His  smile  brought  tears  to  my  eyes ;  it 
was  like  melancholy  sunlight  on  a  ruin." 
A  man  who  sincerely  laughs  and  smiles 
is  somewhat  less  than  half  a  cynic.  If 
there  be  any  alive  at  this  late  hour  who 
questions  the  genuineness  of  Hazlitt's 
high  spirits,  he  may  be  referred  to  the 
essay  On  Going  a  Journey,  with  the  paean 
about  "  the  gentleman  in  the  parlor,"  in 
the  finest  emulation  of  Cowley  ;  but  chief- 


258 


ly  and  constantly  to  The  Fight,  with  its 
lingering  De-Foe-like  details,  sprinkled, 
not  in  the  least  ironically,  with  gold- 
dust  of  Chaucer  and  the  later  poets :  the 
rich-ringing,  unique  Fig/it*  predecessor 

*  The  Fight  appeared  in  the  New  Monthly  Maga 
zine  in  1822.  It  was  itself  antedated  by  The  Fancy  ot 
John  Hamilton  Reynolds,  Keats's  friend  and  Hood's 
brother-in-law,  which  was  printed  in  1820.  The  jolly 
iambics  are  as  inspired  as  the  essay.  "P.  C."  is,  of 
course,  Pugilistic  Club. 

"  Oh,  it  is  life!  to  see  a  proud 

And  dauntless  man  step,  full  of  hopes, 
Up  to  the  P.  C.  stakes  and  ropes, 
Throw  in  his  hat,  and  with  a  spring 
Get  gallantly  within  the  ring ; 
Eye  the  wide  crown,  and  walk  awhile 
Taking  all  cheerings  with  a  smile  ; 
To  see  him  strip ;   his  well-trained  form, 
White,  glowing,  muscular,  and  warm, 
All  beautiful  in  conscious  posver, 
Relaxed  and  quiet,  till  the  hour; 
His  glossy  and  transparent  frame, 
In  radiant  plight  to  strive  for  fame  ! 
To  look  upon  the  clean  shap'd  limb 
In  silk  and  flannel  clothed  trim ; 
While  round  the  waist  the  kerchief  tied 
Makes  the  flesh  glow  in  richer  pride. 
'Tis  more  than  life  to  watch  him  hold 
His  hand  forth,  tremulous  yet  bold, 
Over  his  second's,  and  to  clasp 
His  rival's  in  a  quiet  grasp ; 


259 


of  Borrow's  famous  burst  about  the  "all 
tremendous  bruisers"  of  Lavengro ;  and 
not  to  be  matched  in  our  peaceful  litera 
ture  save  with  the  eulogy  and  epitaph  of 
Jack  Cavanagh,  by  the  same  hand.  Di 
vers  hints  have  been  circulated,  within 
sixty -odd  years,  that  Mr.  Hazlitt  was  a 
timid  person ,  also  that  he  had  no  turn 


To  watch  the  noble  attitude 

He  takes,  the  crowd  in  breathless  mood; 

And  then  to  see,  with  adamant  start, 

The  muscles  set,  and  the  great  heart 

Hurl  a  courageous  splendid  light 

Into  the  eye,  and  then — the  FIGHT!" 

But  this  is  general :  Hazlitt  is  specific.  His  particular 
Fight  was  the  great  one  between  Neate  of  Bristol  and 
Tom  Hickman  the  Gasman,  Neate  being  the  victor.  On 
May  20,  1823,  Neate  met  Spring  of  Hertfordshire  (so 
translated  out  of  his  natural  patronymic  of  Winter),  in  a 
contest  for  the  championship,  and  Neate  himself  went 
under.  This  latter  battle  was  mock -heroically  celebrated 
by  Maginn  in  Blackivood' 's,  and  Hood's  casual  meteoro 
logical  simile  heaped  up  honors  on  the  winner : 

"The  Spring!     I  shrink  and  shudder  at  her  name. 

For  why?     I  find  her  breath  a  bitter  blighter, 
And  suffer  from  her  blows  as  if  they  came 
From  Spring  the  fighter!" 

So  that  literature  may  be  said  to  have  set  close  to  the 
ropes  in  those  days,  from  first  to  last. 


for  jokes.  These  ingenious  calumnies 
may  be  trusted  to  meet  the  fate  of  the 
Irish  pagan  fairies,  small  enough  at  the 
start,  whose  punishment  it  is  to  dwin 
dle  ever  and  ever  away,  and  point  a  mor 
al  to  succeeding  generations.  Hazlitt's 
paradoxes  are  not  of  malice  prepense, 
but  are  the  ebullitions  both  of  pure 
fun  and  of  the  truest  philosophy.  "  The 
Only  way  to  be  reconciled  with  old 
friends  is  to  part  with  them  for  good." 
"  Goldsmith  had  the  satisfaction  of 
good-naturedly  relieving  the  necessi 
ties  of  others,  and  of  being  harassed  to 
death  with  his  own."  "  Captain  Bur- 
ney  had  you  at  an  advantage  by  never 
understanding  you."  Scattered  mention 
of  "  people  who  live  on  their  own  estates 
and  on  other  people's  ideas  ";  of  Jeremy 
Bentham,  who  had  been  translated  into 
French,  "when  it  was  the  greatest  pity 
in  the  world  that  he  had  not  been  trans 
lated  into  English  ";  of  the  Coleridge  of 
prose,  one  of  whose  prefaces  is  "a  mas 
terpiece  of  its  kind,  having  neither  begin 
ning,  middle,  nor  end  ";  and  even  of  the 
"singular  animal,"  John  Bull  himself. 


26l 


since  "  being  the  beast  he  is  has  made 
a  man  of  him  ": — these  are  no  ill  shots 
at  the  sarcastic.  Congreve,  v/ith  all  his 
quicksilver  wit,  could  not  outgo  Haz- 
litt  on  Thieves,  videlicet :  "  Even  a  high 
wayman,  in  the  way  of  trade,  may  blow 
out  your  brains  ;  but  if  he  uses  foul  lan 
guage  at  the  same  time,  I  should  say 
he  was  no  gentleman  !"  Hazlitt's  sense 
of  humor  has  quality,  if  not  quantity. 
How  was  it  this  same  sense  of  hu 
mor,  this  fine-grained  reticence,  which 
wrote,  nay,  printed,  in  1823,  the  piteous 
and  ludicrous  canticle  of  the  goddess 
Sarah  ? 

Hazlitt  was  a  great  pedestrian  from  his 
boyhood  on,  and,  like  Goldsmith,  a  fair 
hand  at  the  game  of  fives,  which  he  played 
by  the  day.  Wherever  he  was,  his  pock 
et  bulged  with  a  book.  It  gave  him  keen 
pleasure  to  set  down  the  hour,  the  place, 
the  mood,  and  the  weather  of  various 
ecstatic  first  readings.  He  became  ac 
quainted  with  Love  for  Love  in  a  low 
wainscoted  tavern  parlor  between  Farn- 
ham  and  Alton,  looking  out  upon  a  gar 
den  of  larkspur,  with  a  portrait  of  Charles 


262 


II.  crowning  the  chimney-piece;  in  his 
father's  house  he  fell  across  Tom  Jones, 
"  a  child's  Tom  Jones,  an  innocent  creat 
ure  ";  he  bought  Milton  and  Burke  at 
Shrewsbury,  on  the  march  ;  he  looked  up 
from  Mrs.  Inchbald's  Simple  Story,  when 
its  pathos  grew  too  poignant,  to  find  "a 
summer  shower  dropping  manna"  on  his 
head,  and  "  an  old  crazy  hand-organ  play 
ing  Robin  Adair."  And  on  April  10,  1798, 
his  twentieth  birthday,  he  sat  down  to  a 
volume  of  the  New  Eloise,  a  book  which 
kept  its  hold  upon  him,  "at  the  inn  of 
Llangollen,  over  a  bottle  of  sherry  and  a 
cold  chicken  !"  The  frank  epicurean  cat 
alogue,  as  of  equal  spiritual  and  corpo 
real  delight,  is  worth  notice.  Do  we  not 
know  that  Mr.  Hazlitt  had  wood  -  par 
tridges  for  supper,  in  his  middle  age,  at 
the  Golden  Cross,  in  Rastadt,  near  May- 
ence  ?  Yet  he  failed  to  record  what  book 
lay  by  his  plate,  and  distracted  his  atten 
tion  from  her  who  had  been  a  widow,  and 
who  was  already  planning  her  respecta 
ble  exit  from  his  society.  Evidence  that 
he  was  an  eater  of  taste  is  to  be  accumu 
lated  eagerly  by  his  partisans,  for  eat- 


263 


ing  is  one  of  many  engaging  human 
characteristics  which  establish  him  as 
lovable  —  that  is,  posthumously  lovable. 
Barry  Cornwall  was  so  jealously  tender 
of  his  memory  that  he  would  have  for 
bidden  any  one  to  write  of  Hazlitt  who 
had  not  known  him.  As  he  did  not  warm 
miscellaneously  to  everybody,  it  followed 
that  his  friends  were  few.  We  do  not 
forget  which  one  of  these,  during  their 
only  difference,  thought  "to  go  to  his 
grave  without  finding,  or  expecting  to 
find,  such  another  companion."* 

Hazlitt  would  have  set  himself  down, 
by  choice,  as  a  metaphysician.  Up  to  the 
time  when  his  Life  of  Napoleon  was  well 
in  hand,  he  used  to  affirm  that  the  anon 
ymous  Principles  of  Human  Action,  which 
he  completed  at  twenty,  in  the  literary 
style  of  the  azoic  age,  was  his  best  work. 
He  was  rather  proud,  too,  of  the  Char 
acteristics  in  the  Manner  of  Rochefou 
cauld's  Maxims,  his  one  dreary  book, 
which  contains  a  couple  of  inductions 
worthy  of  Pascal,  some  sophistries  and 

*  "Lamb,  in  "A  Letter  to  R.  Southey,  Esq." 


264 


hollow  cynicisms  not  native  to  Hazlitt's 
brain,  and  a  vast  number  of  the  very  pro- 
fessorisms  which  he  scouted.  Maxims, 
indeed,  are  sown  broadcast  over  his  pages, 
which  Alison  the  historian  classified  as 
better  to  quote  than  to  read  ;  but  they 
gain  by  being  incidental,  and  embedded 
in  the  body  of  his  fancies.  His  vein  of 
original  thought  comes  nowhere  so  per 
fectly  into  play  as  in  its  application  to 
affairs.  His  pen  is  anything  but  abstruse, 

"Housed  in  a  dream,  at  distance  from  the  kind." 

He  did  not  recognize  that  to  display  his 
highest  power  he  needed  deeds  and  men, 
and  their  tangible  outcome  to  be  criti 
cised.  His  preferences  were  altogether 
wed  to  the  past.  In  his  essay  on  Envy 
he  excuses,  with  a  wise  reflection,  his 
comparative  indifference  to  living  writ 
ers  :  "  We  try  to  stifle  the  sense  we  have 
of  their  merit,  not  because  they  are  new 
or  modern,  but  because  we  are  not  sure 
they  will  ever  be  old."  Or,  as  Professor 
Wilson  said  of  him,  with  tardy  but  win 
ning  kindness:  "In  short,  if  you  want 


265 


Hazlitt's  praise,  you  must  die  for  it.  ... 
and  it  is  almost  worth  dying  for."*  Yet 
what  an  eye  he  has  for  the  idiosyncrasy 
at  his  elbow,  be  it  in  the  individual  or 
in  the  race  !  Every  contemporary  of  his, 
every  painter,  author,  actor,  and  states 
man  of  whom  he  cared  to  write  at  all, 
stands  forth  under  his  touch  in  delicate 
and  aggressive  outlines  from  which  a  wind 
seems  to  blow  back  the  mortal  draperies, 
like  a  figure  in  a  triumphal  procession 
of  Mantegna's.  His  manner  is  essentially 
pictorial.  His  sketches  of  Cobbett  and 
of  Northcote,  in  The  Spirit  of  Obliga 
tions ;  of  Johnson,  in  The  Periodical  Es 
sayists  ;  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  and  Bish 
op  Taylor ;  and  of  Coleridge  and  Lamb, 
drawn  more  than  once,  with  great  power, 
from  the  life,  will  never  be  excelled.  His 
philippic  on  The  Spirit  of  Monarchy,  or 
that  on  The  Regal  Character,  is  a  pure 

*  The  man  of  Martial's  epigram  had  other  "views." 
The  capital  translation  is  Dr.  Goldwin  Smith's  : 

"Vacerra  lauds  no  living  poet's  lays, 
But  for  departed  genius  keeps  his  praise. 
I,  alas,  live ;  nor  deem  it  worth  my  while 
To  die,  that  I  may  win  Vacerra's  smile." 


266 


vitriol  flame,  to  scorch  the  necks  of 
princes.  His  comments  upon  English 
and  Continental  types,  if  gathered  from 
the  necessarily  promiscuous  Notes  of  a 
Journey,  would  make  a  most  d  i verting  and 
illuminating  duodecimo;  the  indictment 
of  the  French  is  especially  masterly.  The 
Spirit  of  the  Age,  The  Plain  Speaker, 
the  Northcote  book,  The  English  Comic 
Writers,  and  the  noble  and  little -read 
Political  Essays  are  packed  with  vital  per 
sonalities.  So  is  The  Characters  of  Shake 
speare  s  Plays,  full  of  beautiful  metaphys 
ical  analysis,  as  well  as  of  vivifying 
criticism.  This  lavish  accumulation  of 
material,  never  put  to  use  according  to 
modern  methods,  must  appear  to  some 
as  a  collection  of  interest  awaiting  the 
broom  and  the  hanging  committee;  but 
until  the  end  of  time  it  will  be  a  place  of 
delight  for  the  scholar  and  the  lover  of 
virtue.  Hazlitt's  genius  for  assortment 
and  sense  of  relative  values  were  not  de 
veloped  ;  he  was  in  no  wise  a  construc 
tive  critic.  Mr.  R.  H.  Hutton  complained 
once  of  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  that  he 
ranked  his  men,  but  did  not  portray  them. 


267 


Now  Hazlitt,  whose  search  is  all,for  char 
acter,  irrespective  of  the  historic  position, 
falls  into  the  opposite  extreme  :  he  por 
trays  his  men,  but  does  not  rank  them.  An 
attempt  to  break  up  into  single  file  the 
merit  which,  with  him,  marches  abreast, 
he  would  look  upon  as  a  bit  of  arrogance 
and  rank  impiety.  He  has  nothing  to 
say  of  the  quality  which  stamps  Bavius 
as  the  best  elegiac  poet  between  Gray 
and  Tennyson,  or  of  the  irony  of  Msevius, 
which  would  place  his  dramas,  were  it 
not  for  their  loose  construction,  next  to 
Moliere's.  He  does  not  care  a  fig  for  com 
parisons  ;  or,  rather,  he  wishes  them  left 
to  the  gods,  and  to  his  perceiving  read 
er.  Meanwhile,  one  face  after  another 
shines  clear  upon  the  wall,  and  breathes 
enchantment  on  a  passer-by. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  be  severe  with 
William  Hazlitt,  who  was  towards  him 
self  so  outspokenly  severe.  Every  strict 
ure  upon  him,  as  well  as  every  defence  to 
be  urged  for  it,  may  be  taken  out  of  his 
own  mouth.  Even  the  Liber  Amoris,  as 
must  always  have  been  discerned,  dem 
onstrates  not  only  his  weakness,  but  his 


268 


essential  .uprightness  and  innocence.  His 
vindication  is  written  large  in  Depth  and 
Superficiality,  in  The  Pleasures  of  Hat 
ing,  in  The  Disadvantage  of  Intellectual 
Superiority,  His  "true  Hamlet"  is  as 
faithful  a  sketch  of  the  author  as  is  New 
man's  celebrated  definition  of  a  gentle 
man.  Hazlitt  says  a  tender  word  for  Dr. 
Johnson's  prejudices  which  covers  and 
explains  many  of  his  own.  Who  can  call 
him  irritable,  recalling  the  splendid  ex 
position  of  merely  selfish  content,  in 
the  opening  paragraphs  of  the  essay  on 
Good  Nature  ?  Yet,  with  all  his  lofty  and 
endearing  qualities,  he  had  a  warped  and 
soured  mind,  a  constitutional  disability  to 
find  pleasure  in  persons  or  in  conditions 
which  were  quiescent.  He  would  have 
every  one  as  mettlesome  and  gloomily 
vigilant  as  he  was  himself.  His  perfectly 
proper  apostrophe  to  the  lazy  Coleridge 
at  Highgate  to  "  start  up  in  his  promised 
likeness,  and  shake  the  pillared  rottenness 
of  the  world,"  is  somewhat  comic.  Haz- 
litt's  nerves  never  lost  their  tension  ;  to 
the  last  hour  of  his  last  sickness  he  was 
ready  for  a  bout.  Much  of  his  personal 


269 


grief  arose  from  his  refusal  to  respect 
facts  as  facts,  or  to  recognize  in  existing 
evil,  including  the  calamitous  perfumed 
figure  of  Turveydrop  gloriously  reigning, 
what  Vernon  Lee  calls  "  part  of  the  mech 
anism  for  producing  good."  He  bit  at 
the  quietist  in  a  hundred  ways,  and 
with  choice  venom.  "  There  are  persons 
who  are  never  very  far  from  the  truth, 
because  the  slowness  of  their  faculties 
will  not  suffer  them  to  make  much  prog 
ress  in  error.  These  are  '  persons  of  great 
judgment.'  The  scales  of  the  mind  are 
pretty  sure  to  remain  even  when  there 
is  nothing  in  them."  He  was  a  natural 
snarlerat  sunshiny  people  with  full  pock 
ets  and  feudal  ideas,  like  Sir  Walter,  who 
got  along  with  the  ogre  What  Is,  and 
even  asked  him  to  dine.  In  fact,  William 
Hazlitt  hated  a  great  many  things  with 
the  utmost  enthusiasm,  and  he  was  im 
polite  enough  to  say  so,  in  and  out  of 
season.  The  Established  Church  and  all 
its  tenets  and  traditions  were  only  less 
monstrous  in  his  eyes  than  legendry,  me- 
dicevalism,  and  "  the  shoal  of  friars."  He 
knew,  from  actual  experience,  the  loyalty 


270 


and  purity  of  the  early  Unitarians,  and 
he  praised  these  with  all  his  heart  and 
tongue.  As  far  as  one  can  make  out,  he 
had  not  the  remotest  conception  of  the 
breadth  and  texture  of  Christianity  as  a 
whole.  His  theory,  for  he  practised  no 
creed  except  the  cheap  one  of  universal 
dissent,  was  a  faint -colored  local  Puri 
tanism  ;  and  that,  as  the  Merry  Monarch 
(an  excellent  judge  of  what  was  not 
what!)  reminds  us,  is  "no  religion  for  a 
gentleman."  But  more  than  this,  Haz- 
litt  had  no  apprehension  of  the  super 
natural  in  anything  ;  he  was  very  unspir- 
itual.  It  is  curious  to  see  how  he  sidles 
away  from  the  finer  English  creatures 
whom  he  had  to  handle.  Sidney  almost 
repels  him,  and  he  dismisses  Shelley,  on 
one  occasion,  with  an  inadequate  but  apt 
allusion  to  the  "hectic  flutter"  of  his 
verse.  Living  in  a  level  country  with  no 
outlook  upon  eternity,  and  no  deep  in 
sight  into  the  human  past,  nor  fully  un 
derstanding  those  who  had  wider  vision 
and  more  instructed  utterance  than  his 
own,  it  follows  that  beside  such  men  as 
those  just  named,  then  as  now,  Hazlitt 


has  a  crude  villageous  mien.  He  had 
his  refined  sophistications;  chief  among 
them  was  a  surpassing  love  of  natural 
beauty.  But  he  relished,  on  the  whole, 
the  beef  and  beer  of  life.  The  normal  was 
what  he  wrote  of  with  "  gusto  "  ;  a  word 
he  never  tired  of  using,  and  which  one 
must  use  in  speaking  of  himself.  While 
he  is  an  admirable  arbiter  of  what  is  or  is 
not  truly  intellectual,  he  is  all  at  sea  when 
he  has  to  discuss,  for  instance,  emotional 
poetry,  or,  what  is  yet  more  difficult  to 
him,  poetry  purely  poetic;  its  inevitable 
touch  of  the  fantastic,  the  mystical,  puts 
his  wits  completely  to  rout.  The  stern, 
lopsided,  and  magnificent  article  on  Shel 
ley's  Posthumous  Poems  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review  for  July,  1824,  and  his  impatience 
with  Coleridge  at  his  best,  perfectly  exem 
plify  this  limitation.  Despite  his  partiali 
ty  for  Rousseau  and  certain  of  the  early 
Italian  painters,  most  of  the  men  whose 
genius  he  seizes  upon  and  exalts  with 
unerring  success  are  the  men  who  dis 
play,  along  with  enormous  acumen  and 
power,  nothing  which  betokens  the  mor 
bid  and  exquisite  thing  we  have  learned 


272 


to  call  modern  culture.  Hazlitt,  fortu 
nately  for  us,  was  not  over-civilized,  had 
no  cinque -cento  instincts,  and  would 
have  groaned  aloud  over  such  hedonism 
as  Mr.  Pater's.  Homespun  and  manly  as 
he  is,  who  can  help  feeling  that  his  was 
but  an  imperfect  development?  that,  as 
Mr.  Arnold  said  so  paternally  of  Byron, 
"  he  did  not  know  enough  "  ?  He  lacked 
both  mental  discipline  and  moral  gov 
ernance.  He  has  the  wayward  and  ap 
pealing  Celtic  utterance ;  the  manner 
made  of  largeness  and  simpleness,  all 
shot  and  interwoven  with  the  hues  of 
romanticism.  Prodigal  that  he  is,  he 
cannot  stoop  to  build  up  his  golden 
piecemeal,  or  to  clinch  his  generalizations, 
thrown  down  loosely,  side  by  side.  Es 
oteric  thrift  is  not  in  him,  nor  the  spir 
it  of  co-operation,  nor  the  sweetest  of  ar 
tistic  anxieties,  that  of  marching  in  line. 
He  has  a  knight-errant  pen  ;  his  glad  and 
chivalrous  services  to  literature  resemble 
those  of  an  outlaw  to  the  commonwealth. 
Despite  his  personal  value,  he  stands  de 
tached  ;  he  is  episodic,  and  represents 
nothing. 


"The  earth  hath  bubbles  as  the  water  hath, 
And  this  is  of  them." 

He  misses  the  white  station  of  a  classic; 
for  the  classics  have  equipoise,  and  inter 
relationship.  But  it  is  great  cause  for 
thankfulness  that  William  Hazlitt  can 
not  be  made  other  than  he  is.  Time  can 
not  take  away  his  height  and  his  red-gold 
garments,  bestow  on  him  the  "  smoother 
head  of  hair"  which  Lamb  prayed  for, 
and  shrivel  him  into  one  of  several  very 
wise  and  weary precieux.  No:  he  stalks 
apart  in  state,  the  splendid  Pasha  of  Eng 
lish  letters. 

Hazlitt  boasts,  and  permissibly,  of  gen 
uine  disinterestedness:  "If  you  wish  to 
see  me  perfectly  calm,"  he  remarks  some 
where,  "  cheat  me  in  a  bargain,  or  tread 
on  my  toes."*  But  he  cannot  promise 

*  This  was  the  spirit  of  Henry  Fielding  on  his  last 
voyage,  hoisted  aboard  among  the  watermen  at  Redcliffe, 
and  hearing  his  emaciated  body  made  the  subject  of  jeers 
and  laughter.  "  No  man  who  knew  me,"  he  writes  in 
his  journal,  "  will  think  1  conceived  any  personal  resent 
ment  at  this  behavior ;  but  it  was  a  lively  picture  of  that 
cruelty  and  inhumanity  in  the  nature  of  man  which  I 
have  often  contemplated  with  concern,  and  which  leads 
iS 


the  same  behavior  for  a  sophism  repeated 
in  his  presence,  or  a  truth  repelled.  In 
his  sixth  year  he  had  been  taken,  with 
his  brother  and  sister,  to  America,  and 
he  says  that  he  never  afterwards  got 
out  of  his  mouth  the  delicious  tang  of  a 
frost-bitten  New  England  barberry.  It 
is  tolerably  sure  that  the  blowy  and 
sunny  atmosphere  of  the  young  repub 
lic  of  1783-7  got  into  him  also.  Liberal 
ism  was  his  birthright.  He  flourishes  his 
fighting  colors ;  he  trembles  with  eager 
ness  to  break  a  lance  with  the  arch-ene 
mies  ;  he  is  a  champion,  from  his  cradle, 
against  class  privilege,  of  slaves  who  know 
not  what  they  are,  nor  how  to  wish  for 
liberty.  But  he  cannot  do  all  this  in  the 
laughing  Horatian  way ;  he  cannot  keep 
cool;  he  cannot  mind  his  object.  If  he 
could,  he  would  be  the  white  devil  of 

the  mind  into  a  train  of  very  uncomfortable  and  melan 
choly  thoughts."  It  is  a  fine  passage,  and  a  strong  heart, 
not  given  to  boasting,  penned  it.  Poor  Hazlitt  could  not 
bear  even  an  unintentional  slight  without  imputing  dia 
bolical  malice  to  the  offender.  Yet  it  was  certainly  true 
that,  in  his  saner  hours,  he  could  suffer  personal  discom 
fort  in  public  without  flinching,  and  deplore  the  habit 
which  imposed  it,  rather  than  the  act 


275 


debate.  There  are  times  when  he  speaks, 
as  does  Dr.  Johnson,  out  of  all  reason, 
because  aware  of  the  obstinacy  and  the 
bad  faith  of  his  hearers.  Morals  are  too 
much  in  his  mind,  and,  after  their  wont, 
they  spoil  his  manners.  Like  the  Caro 
line  Platonist,  Henry  More,  he  "  has  to 
cut  his  way  through  a  crowd  of  thoughts 
as  through  a  wood."  His  temper  breaks 
like  a  rocket,  in  little  lurid  smoking  stars, 
over  every  ninth  page ;  he  lays  about 
him  at  random  ;  he  raises  a  dust  of  side- 
issues.  Hazlitt  sometimes  reminds  one 
of  Burke  himself  gone  off  at  half-cock. 
He  will  not  step  circumspectly  from  light 
to  light,  from  security  to  ^security.  Some 
of  his  very  best  essays,  as  has  been  noted, 
have  either  no  particular  subject,  or  fail 
to  follow  the  one  they  have.  Nor  is  he 
any  the  less  attractive  if  he  be  heated, 
if  he  be  swearing 

"  By  the  blood  so  basely  shed 
Of  the  pride  of  Norfolk's  line," 

or  scornfully  settling  accounts  of  his  own 
with  the  asinine  public.  When  he  is  not 
driven  about  by  his  moods,  Hazlitt  is  set 


276 


upon  his  fact  alone  ;  which  he  thinks  is 
the  sole  concern  of  a  prose-writer.  Grace 
and  force  are  collateral  affairs.  "  In  seek 
ing  for  truth,"  he  says  proudly,  in  words 
fit  to  be  the  epitome  of  his  career,  "  I 
sometimes  found  beauty." 

The  Edinburgh  Review,  in  an  article 
written  while  Hazlitt  was  in  the  full  of 
his  activity,  summed  up  his  shortcomings. 
"There  are  no  great  leading  principles 
of  taste  to  give  singleness  to  his  aims, 
nor  any  central  points  in  his  mind  around 
which  his  feelings  may  revolve  and  his 
imaginations  cluster.  There  is  no  suffi 
cient  distinction  between  his  intellectual 
and  his  imaginative  faculties.  He  con 
founds  the  truths  of  imagination  with 
those  of  fact,  the  processes  of  argument 
with  those  of  feeling,  the  immunities  of 
intellect  with  those  of  virtue."  Here  is 
an  admirable  arraignment,  which  goes 
to  the  heart  of  the  matter.  Hazlitt  him 
self  corroborates  it  in  a  confession  of 
gallant  directness :  "  I  say  what  I  think ; 
I  think  what  I  feel."  It  is  this  fatal 
confusion  which  makes  his  course  now 
rapid  and  clear,  anon  clogged  with  va- 


277 


garies,  as  if  his  rudder  had  run  into  a 
mesh  of  sea -weed;  it  is  this  which  de 
flects  his  judgments,  and  leads  him,  in 
the  shrewd  phrase  of  a  modern  critic,  to 
praise  the  right  things  for  the  wrong 
reasons.  Hazlitt's  prejudices  are  very 
instructive,  even  while  he  bewails  Lan- 
dor's  or  Cobbett's,  and  tells  you,  as  it 
were,  with  a  tear  in  his  eye,  when  he  has 
done  berating  the  French,  that,  after  all, 
they  are  Catholics ;  and  as  for  manners, 
"  Catholics  must  be  allowed  to  carry  it, 
all  over  the  world  !"  His  exquisite  treat 
ment  of  Northcote,  a  winning  old  sharp 
er  for  whom  he  cared  nothing,  is  all  due 
to  his  looking  like  a  Titian  portrait.  So 
with  the  great  Duke :  Hazlitt  hated  the 
sight  of  him,  "  as  much  for  his  paste 
board  visor  of  a  face  as  for  anything 
else."  One  of  his  justifications  for  ador 
ing  Napoleon  was,  that  at  a  levee  a  young 
English  officer  named  Lovelace  drew  from 
him  an  endearing  recognition  :  "  I  per 
ceive,  sir,  that  you  bear  the  name  of  the 
hero  of  Richardson's  romance."  If  you 
look  like  a  Titian  portrait,  if  you  read  and 
remember  Richardson,  you  may  trust  a 


278 


certain  author,  who  knows  a  distinction 
when  he  sees  it,  to  set  you  up  for  the 
idol  of  posterity.  Hazlitt  thought  Mr. 
Wordsworth's  long  and  immobile  coun 
tenance  resembled  that  of  a  horse ;  and 
it  is  not  impossible  that  this  conviction, 
twin -born  with  that  other  that  Mr. 
Wordsworth  was  a  mighty  poet,  is  re 
sponsible  for  various  gibes  at  the  august 
contemporary  whose  memory  owes  so 
much  to  his  pen  in  other  moods. 

He  is  the  most  ingenuous  and  agree 
able  egoist  we  have  had  since  the  sev 
enteenth-century  men.  It  must  be  re 
membered  how  little  he  was  in  touch 
outwardly  with  social  and  civic  affairs; 
how  he  was  content  to  be  the  always 
young  looker-on.  There  was  nothing  for 
him  to  do  but  fall  back,  under  given  con 
ditions,  upon  his  own  capacious  entity. 
The  automaton  called  William  Hazlitt  is 
to  him  a  toy  made  to  his  hand,  to  be 
reached  without  effort ;  the  digest  of  all 
his  study  and  the  applicable  test  of  all 
his  assumptions.  He  knew  himself;  he 
could,  and  did,  with  decorum,  approve  or 
chastise  himself  in  open  court.  "  His 


279 


life  was  of  humanity  the  sphere."  His 
"  I  "  has  a  strong  constituency  in  the 
other  twenty-five  initials.  In  this  sense, 
and  in  our  current  cant,  Hazlitt  is  noth 
ing  if  not  subjective,  super-personal.  His 
sort  of  sentimentalism  is  an  anomaly 
in  Northern  literature,  even  in  the  age 
when  nearly  every  literary  Englishman  of 
note  was  variously  engaged  in  baring  his 
breast.  Whether  he  would  carp  or  sigh, 
he  will  still  hold  you  by  the  button,  as  he 
held  host  and  guest,  master  and  valet, 
to  pour  into  their  adjacent  ears  the  mad 
extravagances  of  the  Liber  Amorts.  He 
gets  a  little  tired  at  his  desk,  after  bat 
tling  for  hours  with  the  slow  and  stu 
pid  in  behalf  of  the  beauty  ever-living; 
he  wants  fresh  air  and  a  reverie  ;  he  must 
digress  or  die.  And  from  abstractions 
bardic  as  Carlyle's,  he  runs  gladly  to  his 
own  approved  self.  This  very  circum 
stance,  which  lends  Hazlitt's  pages  their 
curious  blur  and  stain,  is  the  same  which 
stamps  his  individuality,  and  gives  those 
who  are  drawn  towards  him  at  all  an  un 
speakably  hearty  relish  for  his  company. 
What  shall  we  call  it? — the  habit,  not 


28o 


maudlin  in  him,  of  speaking  out,  of 
draining  his  well  of  emotion  for  the 
benefit  of  the  elect ;  nay,  even  of  delicate 
lyric  whimperings,  beside  which 

"  Poore  Petrarch's  long-deceased  woes  " 

take  on  a  tinsel  glamour.  As  the  dancing- 
girl  carries  her  jewels,  every  one  in  sight 
as  she  moves,  so  our  "  Faustus,  that  was 
wont  to  make  the  schools  ring  with  Sic 
probo,"  steps  into  the  forum  jingling  and 
twinkling  with  personalia.  He  is  quite 
aware  of  the  figure  he  may  cut :  he  does 
not  stumble  into  an  intimacy  with  you 
because  he  is  absent-minded,  or  because 
he  is  liable  to  an  attack  of  affectation. 
He  is  as  conscious  as  Poussin's  giants, 
whom  he  once  described  as  "  seated  on 
the  tops  of  craggy  mountains,  playing 
idly  on  their  Pan's  pipes,  and  knowing 
the  beginning  and  the  end  of  their  own 
story."  Many  sentences  of  his,  from  their 
structure,  might  be  attributed  to  Cole 
ridge,  the  single  person  from  whom  Haz- 
litt  admits  to  have  learned  anything;* 

*  If  Hazlitt   conveyed   some   of  his  best   mannerisms 
from  Coleridge,  not  always  transmuting  them,  surely  the 


but  there  is  no  mistaking  his  note  hnue : 
that  is  as  obvious  as  the  syncopations  in 
a  Scotch  tune,  or  the  long  eyes  of  Or- 
cagna's  saints. 

He  wishes  you  to  know,  at  every 
breathing-space,  "  how  ill's  all  here  about 
my  heart ;  but  'tis  no  matter."  Laying 
by  or  taking  up  an  old  print  or  folio,  he 
loosens  some  fond  confidence  to  that 
surprised  novice,  the  common  reader. 
Like  Shelley  here,  as  in  a  few  other  af 
fectionate  absurdities,  the  prince  of  prose, 
turning  from  his  proper  affairs,  assures 
you  that  he,  too,  is  human,  hoping,  un 
happy ;  he  also  has  lived  in  Arcadia.  It 
is  in  such  irrelevancies  that  he  is  fully 
himself,  Hazlitt  freed,  Hazlitt  autobio- 

balance  may  be  said  to  be  even  when  one  discovers  later 
in  Hartley  Coleridge  such  an  easy  inherited  use  of  Haz- 
litt's  "flail  of  gold  "  as  is  exemplified  in  this  summary  of 
Roger  Ascham's  career.  "There  was  a  primitive  hon 
esty,  a  kindly  innocence  about  this  good  old  scholar, 
which  gave  a  personal  interest  to  the  homeliest  details  of 
his  life.  He  had  the  rare  felicity  of  passing  through  the 
worst  of  times  without  persecution  and  without  dishonor. 
He  lived  with  princes  and  princesses,  prelates  and  diplo 
matists,  without  offence  as  without  ambition.  Though  he 
enjoyed  the  smiles  of  royalty,  his  heart  was  none  the 
worse,  and  his  fortunes  little  the  better." 


282 


graphic,  "  his  chariot-wheels  hot  by  driv 
ing  fast."*  Who  can  forget  the  paren 
theses  in  his  advices  to  his  little  son, 
about  the  scholar  having  neither  mate 
nor  fellow,  and  the  god  of  love  clapping 
his  wings  upon  the  river-bank  to  mock 
him  as  he  passes  by  ?  Or  the  noble  and 
moving  passage  in  The  Pleasures  of 
Painting,  beginning  with  "  My  father  was 
willing  to  sit  as  long  as  I  pleased,"  and 
ending  with  the  longing  for  the  revolu 
tion  of  the  great  Platonic  year,  that  those 
times  might  come  over  again  !  He  fresh 
ens  with  his  own  childhood  the  garden 
of  larkspur  and  mignonette  at  Walworth, 
and  "  the  rich  notes  of  the  thrush  that 
startle  the  ear  of  winter .  .  .  dear  in  them 
selves,  and  dearer  for  the  sake  of  what  is 
departed."  You  care  not  so  much  for 
the  placid  stream  by  Peterborough  as  for 
his  own  wistful  pilgrimage  to  the  nigh 


*  The  quotation  is  from  Coleridge,  and  it  was  applied 
by  him  to  Dryden.  Hazlitt  himself  unconsciously  ex 
panded  and  spoiled  it  in  his  essay  on  Burke.  "The 
wheels  of  his  imagination  did  not  catch  fire  from  the  rot 
tenness  of  the  material,  but  from  the  rapidity  of  their 
motion." 


farmhouse  gate,  where  the  ten-year-old 
Grace  Loftus  (his  much-beloved  mother, 
who  survived  him)  used  to  gaze  upon  the 
setting  sun.  And  in  a  choric  outburst 
of  praise  for  Mrs.  Siddons,  the  splendor 
seems  to  culminate  less  in  "  her  majestic 
form  rising  up  against  misfortune,  an 
antagonist  power  to  it  "  (what  a  truly 
Shakespearean  breadth  is  in  that  de 
scription  !) ;  less  in  the  sight  of  her  name 
on  the  play-bill,  "  drawing  after  it  a  long 
trail  of  Eastern  glory,  a  joy  and  felicity 
unutterable,"  than  in  the  widening  dream 
of  the  happy  lad  in  the  pit,  in  his  sover 
eign  vision  "  of  waning  time,  of  Persian 
thrones  and  them  that  sat  on  them";  in 
the  human  life  which  appeared  to  him, 
of  a  sudden,  "  far  from  indifferent,"  and 
in  his  "  overwhelming  and  drowning  flood 
of  tears."  He  can  beautify  the  evening 
star  itself,  this  innovator,  who  records 
that  after  a  tranced  and  busy  day  at  the 
easel,  the  day  of  Auslerlitz,  he  watched 
it  set  over  a  poor  man's  cottage  with 
other  thoughts  and  feelings  than  he  shall 
ever  have  again.  There  is  nothing  of 
le  moi  haissable  in  all  this.  It  is  delib- 


284 


erate  naturalism  ;  the  rebellion  against 
didactics  and  "  tall  talk,"  the  milestone 
of  a  return,  parallel  with  that  of  Words 
worth,  to  the  fearless  contemplation  of 
plain  and  near  things.  But  in  a  profess 
ing  logician,  is  it  not  somewhat  peculiar? 
When  has  even  a  poet  so  centred  the 
universe  in  his  own  heart,  without  of 
fence  ? 

Hazlitt  threw  away  his  brush,  as  a 
heroic  measure,  because  he  foresaw  but 
a  middling  success.  Many  canvases  he 
cut  into  shreds,  in  a  fury  of  dissatisfac 
tion  with  himself.  Northcote,  however, 
thought  his  lack  of  patience  had  spoiled 
a  great  painter.  He  was  too  full  of  wor 
ship  of  the  masters  to  make  an  attentive 
artisan.  The  sacrifice,  like  all  his  sacri 
fices,  great  or  small,  left  nothing  behind 
but  sweetness,  the  unclouded  love  of  ex 
cellence,  and  the  capacity  of  rejoicing 
at  another's  attaining  whatever  he  had 
missed.  But  the  sense  of  disparity  be 
tween  supreme  intellectual  achievement 
and  that  which  is  only  partial  and  rela 
tive,  albeit  of  equal  purity,  followed  him 
like  a  frenzy.  Comparison  is  yet  more 


difficult  in  literature  than  in  art,  and  Haz- 
litt  could  take  some  satisfaction  in  the 
results  of  his  second  ardor.  He  felt  his 
power  most,  perhaps,  as  a  critic  of  the 
theatre.  English  actors  owe  him  an  in 
calculable  debt,  and  their  best  spirits  are 
not  unmindful  of  it.  He  was  reasonably 
assured  of  the  duration  and  increase  of 
his  fame.  Has  he  not,  in  one  of  his  head 
strong  digressions,  called  the  thoughts 
in  his  Table -Talk  "founded  as  rock, 
free  as  air,  the  tone  like  an  Italian  pict 
ure  ?"  Even  there,  however,  the  faint 
heartedness  natural  to  every  true  artist 
troubled  him.  He  went  home  in  despair 
from  the  spectacle  of  the  Indian  juggler, 
"  in  his  white  dress  and  tightened  tur 
ban,"  tossing  the  four  brass  balls.  "  To 
make  them  revolve  round  him  at  certain 
intervals,  like  the  planets  in  their  spheres, 
to  make  them  chase  one  another  like 
sparkles  of  fire,  or  shoot  up  like  flowers 
or  meteors,  to  throw  them  behind  his 
back,  and  twine  them  round  his  neck 
like  ribbons  or  like  serpents ;  to  do  what 
appears  an  impossibility,  and  to  do  it 
with  all  the  ease>  the  grace,  the  careless- 


ness  imaginable ;  to  laugh  at,  to  play 
with  the  glittering  mockeries,  to  follow 
them  with  his  eye  as  if  he  could  fascinate 
them  with  its  lambent  fire,  or  as  if  he  had 
only  to  see  that  they  kept  time  to  the 
music  on  the  stage — there  is  something 
in  all  this  which  he  who  does  not  admire 
may  be  quite  sure  he  never  really  ad 
mired  anything  in  the  whole  course  of 
his  life.  It  is  skill  surmounting  difficulty, 
and  beauty  triumphing  over  skill.  ...  It 
makes  me  ashamed  of  myself.  I  ask 
what  there  is  that  I  can  do  as  well  as 
this?  Nothing."  A  third  person  must 
give  another  answer.  The  whole  passage 
offers  a  very  exquisite  parallel ;  for  in 
just  such  a  daring,  varied,  and  magical 
way  can  William  Hazlitt  write.  The  as 
tounding  result,  "  which  costs  nothing," 
is  founded,  in  each  case,  upon  the  toil  of 
a  lifetime.  Hazlitt's  style  is  an  incredi 
ble  thing.  It  is  not,  like  Lamb's,  of  one 
warp  and  woof.  It  soars  to  the  rhetori 
cal  sublime,  and  drops  to  hard  Saxon 
slang.  It  is  for  all  the  world,  and  not 
only  for  specialists.  Its  range  and  change 
incorporate  the  utmost  of  many  men. 


287 


The  trenchant  sweep,  the  simplicity  and 
point  of  Newman  at  his  best,  are 
matched  by  the  pages  on  Cobbett,  on 
Fox,  and  On  the  Regal  Character ;  and 
there  is,  to  choose  but  one  opposite 
instance,  in  the  paper  On  the  Uncon 
sciousness  of  Genius,  touching  Correg- 
gio,  a  fragment  of  pure  eloquence  of  a 
very  ornate  sort,  whose  onward  bound, 
glow,  and  volley  can  give  Mr.  Swinburne's 
Essays  and  Studies  a  look  as  of  sails  wait 
ing  for  the  wind.  The  same  hand  which 
fills  a  brief  with  epic  cadences  and  invo 
cations  overwrought,  throws  down,  often 
without  an  adjective,  sentence  after  sen 
tence  of  ringing  steel :  "  Fashion  is  gen 
tility  running  away  from  vulgarity,  and 
afraid  of  being  overtaken  by  it."  "  It  is  not 
the  omission  of  individual  circumstance, 
but  the  omission  of  general  truth,  which 
constitutes  the  little,  the  deformed,  and 
the  short-lived  in  art."  The  man's  large 
voice  in  these  aphorisms  is  Hazlitt's  un 
mistakably.  If  it  be  not  as  novel  to  this 
generation  as  if  he  were  but  just  enter 
ing  the  lists  of  authorship,  it  is  because 
his  fecundating  mind  has  been  long  en- 


288 


riching  at  second-hand  the  libraries  of 
the  English  world.  He  comes  forth,  like 
another  outrider,  Rossetti,  so  far  behind 
his  heralds  and  disciples,  that  his  man 
nered  utterance  seems  familiar,  and  an 
echo  of  theirs.  For  it  may  be  said  at 
last,  thanks  to  the  numerous  reprints  of 
the  last  seven  years,  and  thanks  to  a  few 
competent  critics,  whom  Mr.  Stevenson 
leads,  that  Hazlitt's  robust  work  is  in  a 
fair  way  to  be  known  and  appraised,  by  a 
public  which  is  a  little  less  unworthy  of 
him  than  his  own.  His  method  is  en 
tirely  unscientific,  and  therefore  archaic. 
If  we  can  profit  no  longer  by  him,  we  can 
get  out  of  him  cheer  and  delight :  and 
these  profit  unto  immortality.  Mean 
while,  what  mere  "  maker  of  beautiful 
English "  shall  be  pitted  against  him 
there  where  he  sits,  the  despair  of  a  gen 
eration  of  experts,  continually  tossing  the 
four  brass  balls  ? 

It  has  been  said  often  by  shallow  re 
viewers,  and  is  said  sometimes  still,  that 
Hazlitt's  style  aims  at  effect ;  as  if  an 
effect  must  not  be  won,  without  aiming, 
by  a  "born  man  of  letters, "as  Mr.  Saints- 


289 


bury  described  him,  "who  could  not 
help  turning  into  literature  everything 
he  touched."  *  The  "  effect,"  under  given 
conditions,  is  manifest,  unavoidable.  Once 
let  Hazlitt  speak,  as  he  speaks  ever,  in  the 
warmth  of  conviction,  and  what  an  intoxi 
cating  music  begins  ! — wild  as  that  of  the 
gypsies,  and  with  the  same  magnet-touch 
on  the  sober  senses :  enough  to  subvert 
all  "criticism  and  idle  distinction,"  and 
to  bring  back  those  Theban  times  when 
the  force  of  a  sound,  rather  than  masons 
and  surveyors,  sent  the  very  walls  waltz 
ing  into  their  places. 

In  the  face  of  diction  so  joyously  clear 
as  his,  so  sumptuous  and  splendid,  it 
is  well  to  endorse  Mr.  Ruskin,  that 
"  no  right  style  was  ever  founded  save 
out  of  a  sincere  heart."  It  can  never 
be  said  of  William  Hazlitt,  as  Dean 

*  The  Rev.  H.  R.  Haweis  has  another  characterization 
of  these  breathing  and  burning  pages  :  "  long  and  tiresome 
essays  by  Hazlitt."  So  they  are,  sure  enough,  if  only 
you  be  endowed  to  think  so  !  Hazlitt  himself  gives  the 
diverting  fact  for  what  it  is  worth,  that  "  three  chimney 
sweeps  meeting  three  Chinese  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields, 
they  laughed  at  one  another  till  they  were  ready  to  drop 
down." 
'9 


Trench  well  said  of  those  other  "great 
stylists,"  Landor  and  De  Quincey,  that 
he  had  a  lack  of  moral  earnestness. 
What  he  was  determined  to  impress 
upon  his  reader,  during  the  quarter- 
century  while  he  held  a  pen,  was  not 
that  he  was  knowing,  not  that  he  was 
worthy  of  the  renown  and  fortune  which 
passed  him  by,  but  only  that  he  had  rec 
titude  and  a  consuming  passion  for  good. 
He  declares  aloud  that  his  escutcheon 
has  no  bar-sinister :  he  has  not  sold  him 
self;  he  has  spoken  truth  in  and  out  of 
season ;  he  has  honored  the  excellent  at 
his  own  risk  and  cost ;  he  has  fought  for 
a  principle  and  been  slain  for  it,  from  his 
youth  up.  His  sole  boast  is  proven.  In 
a  far  deeper  sense  than  Leigh  Hunt,  for 
whom  he  forged  the  lovely  compliment, 
he  was  "the  visionary  in  humanity,  the 
fool  of  virtue, "and  the  captain  of  those 
who  stood  fast,  in  a  hostile  day,  for  ig 
nored  and  eternal  ideals.  The  best  thing 
to  be  said  of  him,  the  thing  for  which, 
in  Haydon's  phrase,  "everybody  must 
love  him,"  is  that  he  himself  loved  jus 
tice  and  hated  iniquity.  He  shared  the 


29 1 


groaning  of  the  spirit  after  mortal  wel 
fare  with  Swift  and  Fielding,  with  Shel 
ley  and  Matthew  Arnold,  with  Carlyle 
and  Rusk  in  ;  he  was  corroded  with  cares 
and  desires  not  his  own.  Beside  this 
intense  devotedness,  what  personal  flaw 
will  ultimately  show?  The  host  who 
figure  in  the  Roman  martyrology  hang 
all  their  claim  upon  the  fact  of  mar 
tyrdom,  and,  according  to  canon  law, 
need  not  have  been  saints  in  their  life 
time  at  all.  So  with  such  souls  as  his  : 
in  the  teeth  of  a  thousand  acknowl 
edged  imperfections  in  life  or  in  art, 
they  remain  our  exemplars.  Let  them 
do  what  they  will,  at  some  one  stroke 
they  dignify  this  earth.  It  is  not  Haz- 
litt,  "  the  born  man  of  letters "  alone, 
but  Hazlitt  the  born  humanist,  who  be 
queaths  us,  from  his  England  of  coarse 
misconception  and  abuse,  a  memory  like 
a  loadstar,  and  a  name  which  is  a  toast 
to  be  drunk  standing. 


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